literary reputations, whose popularity is almost in an inverse ratio to
his celebrity. Every one knows the names of Sir Charles Grandison and
Clarissa Harlowe. They are amongst the established types which serve to
point a paragraph; but the volumes in which they are described remain
for the most part in undisturbed repose, sleeping peacefully amongst
Charles Lamb's _biblia a-biblia_, books which are no books, or, as he
explains, those books 'which no gentleman's library should be without.'
They never enjoy the honours of cheap reprints; the modern reader
shudders at a novel in eight volumes, and declines to dig for amusement
in so profound a mine; when some bold inquirer dips into their pages he
generally fancies that the sleep of years has been somehow absorbed into
the paper; a certain soporific aroma exhales from the endless files of
fictitious correspondence. This contrast, however, between popularity
and celebrity is not so rare as to deserve special notice. Richardson's
slumber may be deeper than that of most men of equal fame, but it is not
quite unprecedented. The string of paradoxes, which it would be easy to
apply to Richardson, would turn upon a different point. The odd thing
is, not that so many people should have forgotten him, but that he
should have been remembered by people at first sight so unlike him. Here
is a man, we might say, whose special characteristic it was to be a
milksop--who provoked Fielding to a coarse hearty burst of ridicule--who
was steeped in the incense of useless adulation from a throng of
middle-aged lady worshippers--who wrote his novels expressly to
recommend little unimpeachable moral maxims, as that evil courses lead
to unhappy deaths, that ladies ought to observe the laws of propriety,
and generally that it is an excellent thing to be thoroughly
respectable; who lived an obscure life in a petty coterie in fourth-rate
London society, and was in no respect at a point of view more exalted
than that of his companions. What greater contrast can be imagined in
its way than that between Richardson, with his second-rate
eighteenth-century priggishness and his twopenny-tract morality, and the
modern school of French novelists, who are certainly not prigs, and
whose morality is by no means that of tracts? We might have expected _à
priori_ that they would have summarily put him down, as a hopeless
Philistine. Yet Richardson was idolised by some of their best writers;
Balzac, for example, and George Sand, speak of him with reverence; and a
writer who is, perhaps, as odd a contrast to Richardson as could well be
imagined--Alfred de Musset--calls 'Clarissa' _le premier roman du
monde_. What is the secret which enables the steady old printer, with
his singular limitation to his own career of time and space, to impose
upon the Byronic Parisian of the next century? Amongst his
contemporaries Diderot expresses an almost fanatical admiration of
Richardson for his purity and power, and declares characteristically
that he will place Richardson's works on the same shelf with those of
Moses, Homer, Euripides, and other favourite writers; he even goes so
far as to excuse Clarissa's belief in Christianity on the ground of her
youthful innocence. To continue in the paradoxical vein, we might ask
how the quiet tradesman could create the character which has stood ever
since for a type of the fine gentleman of the period; or how from the
most prosaic of centuries should spring one of the most poetical of
feminine ideals? We can hardly fancy a genuine hero with a pigtail, or a
heroine in a hoop and high-heeled shoes, nor believe that persons who
wore those articles of costume could possess any very exalted virtues.
Perhaps our grandchildren may have the same difficulty about the race
which wears crinolines and chimney-pot hats.
It is a fact, however, that our grandfathers, in spite of their belief
in pigtails, and in Pope's poetry, and other matters that have gone out
of fashion, had some very excellent qualities, and even some genuine
sentiment, in their compositions. Indeed, now that their peculiarities
have been finally packed away in various lumber-rooms, and the revolt
against the old-fashioned school of thought and manners has become
triumphant instead of militant, we are beginning to see the picturesque
side of their character. They have gathered something of the halo that
comes with the lapse of years; and social habits that looked prosaic
enough to contemporaries, and to the generation which had to fight
against them, have gained a touch of romance. Richardson's characters
wear a costume and speak a language which are indeed queer and
old-fashioned, but are now far enough removed from the present to have a
certain piquancy; and it is becoming easier to recognise the real genius
which created them, as the active aversion to the forms in which it was
necessarily clothed tends to disappear. The wigs and the high-heeled
shoes are not without a certain pleasing quaintness; and when we have
surmounted this cause of disgust, we can see more plainly what was the
real power which men of the most opposite schools in art have
recognised. Readers whose appetite for ancient fiction is insufficient
to impel them to a perusal of 'Clarissa' may yet find some amusement in
turning over the curious collection of letters published with a life by
Mrs. Barbauld in 1804. Nowhere can we find a more vivid picture of the
social stratum to which Richardson belonged. We take a seat in the old
gentleman's shop, or drop in to take a dish of tea with him at North
End, in Hammersmith. We learn to know them almost as well as we know the
literary circle of the next generation from Boswell or the higher social
sphere from Horace Walpole--and it is a pleasant relief, after reading
the solemn histories which recall the struggles of Walpole and
Chesterfield and their like, to drop in upon this quiet little coterie
of homely commonplace people leading calm domestic lives and amusingly
unconscious of the political and intellectual storms which were raging
outside. Richardson himself was the typical industrious apprentice. He
was the son of a London tradesman who had witnessed with due horror the
Popish machinations of James II. Richardson, born just after the
Revolution, had been apprenticed to a printer, married his master's
daughter, set up a fairly successful business, was master of the
Stationers' Company in 1754, and was prosperous enough to have his
country box, first at North End and afterwards at Parson's Green. He
never learned any language but his own. He had taken to writing from his
infancy; he composed little stories of an edifying tendency and had
written love-letters for young women of his acquaintance. From his
experience in these departments he acquired the skill which was
afterwards displayed in 'Pamela' and his two later and superior novels.
We hear dimly of many domestic trials: of the loss of children, some of
whom had lived to be 'delightful prattlers,' of 'eleven affecting deaths
in two years.' Who were the eleven remains unknown. His sorrows have
long passed into oblivion, unless so far as the sentiment was transmuted
into his writings. We do not know whether it was from calamity or
constitutional infirmity that he became a very nervous and tremulous
little man. He never dared to ride, but exercised himself on a
'chamber-horse,' one of which apparently wooden animals he kept at each
of his houses. For years he could not raise a glass to his lips without
help. His dread of altercations prevented him from going often among
his workmen. He gave his orders in writing that he might not have to
bawl to a deaf foreman. He gave up 'wine and flesh and fish.' He drew a
capital portrait of himself, for the benefit of a lady still unknown to
him, who recognised him by its help at a distance of 'above three
hundred yards.' His description is minute enough: 'Short; rather plump
than emaciated, notwithstanding his complaints; about 5 foot 5 inches;
fair wig, lightish cloth coat, all black besides; one hand generally in
his bosom, the other, a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts
of his coat usually, that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support
when attacked by sudden tremors or startings and dizziness, which too
frequently attack him, but, thank God, not so often as formerly; looking
directly foreright, as passers by would imagine, but observing all that
stirs on either hand of him without moving his short neck; hardly ever
turning back; of a light-brown complexion; teeth not yet failing him;
smoothish-faced and ruddy cheeked; at some times looking to be about
sixty-five, at others much younger' (really sixty); 'a regular even pace
stealing away ground rather than seeming to rid it; a grey eye, too
often overclouded by mistinesses from the head; by chance lively--very
lively it will be if he have hopes of seeing a lady whom he loves and
honours; his eye always on the ladies; if they have very large hoops, he
looks down and supercilious and as if he would be thought wise, but
perhaps the sillier for that; as he approaches a lady his eye is never
fixed first upon her face, but upon her feet and thence he raises it up
pretty quickly for a dull eye; and one would think (if we thought him at
all worthy of observation) that from her air and the last beheld (her
face) he sets her down in his mind as _so_ and _so_, and then passes on
to the next object he meets; only then looking back, if he greatly
likes or dislikes, as if he would see if the lady appear to be all of a
piece in the one light or the other.' After this admirable likeness we
can appreciate better the two coloured engravings in the letters.
Richardson looks like a plump white mouse in a wig, at once vivacious
and timid. We see him in one picture toddling along the Pantiles at
Tunbridge-Wells, in the neighbourhood of the great Mr. Pitt and Speaker
Onslow and the bigamous Duchess of Kingston and Colley Cibber and the
cracked and shrivelled-up Whiston and a (perhaps not the famous) Mr.
Johnson in company with a bishop. In the other, he is sitting in his
parlour with its stiff old-fashioned furniture and a glimpse into the
garden, reading 'Sir Charles Grandison' to the admirable Miss Mulso,
afterwards Mrs. Chapone, and a small party, inclusive of the artist,
Miss Highmore, to whom we owe sincere gratitude for this peep into the
past. Richardson sits in his 'usual morning dress,' a kind of brown
dressing-gown with a skull-cap on his head, filling the chair with his
plump little body, and raising one foot (or has the artist found
difficulties in planting both upon the ground?) to point his moral with
an emphatic stamp.
Many eminent men of his time were polite to Richardson after he had won
fame at the mature age of fifty. He was not the man to presume on his
position. He was 'very shy of obtruding himself on persons of
condition.' He never rose like Pope, whose origin was not very
dissimilar, to speak to princes and ministers as an equal. He was always
the obsequious and respectful shopkeeper. The great Warburton wrote a
letter to his 'good sir'--a phrase equivalent to the two fingers of a
dignified greeting--suggesting, in Pope's name and his own, a plan for
continuing 'Pamela.' She was to be the ingenuous young person shocked at
the conventionalities of good society. Richardson sensibly declined a
plan for which he was unfitted; and in 1747 Warburton condescended to
write a preface to 'Clarissa Harlowe,' pointing out (very
superfluously!) the nature of the intended moral. Warburton afterwards
took offence at a passage in the same book which he took to glance at
Pope; and Richardson was on friendly terms with two authors, Edwards, of
the 'Canons of Criticism,' and Aaron Hill, who were among the
multitudinous enemies of Warburton and his patron Pope. Hill's letters
in the correspondence are worth reading as illustrations of the old
moral of literary vanity. He expresses with unusual _naïveté_ the
doctrine, so pleasant to the unsuccessful, that success means the
reverse of merit. Pope's fame was due to personal assiduities, and 'a
certain bladdery swell of management.' It is already passing away. He
does not speak from jealousy, for nobody ever courted fame 'with less
solicitude than I.' But for all that, there will come a time! He knows
it on a surer ground than vanity. Let us hope that this little salve to
self-esteem never lost its efficacy. Surely of all prayers the most
injudicious was that of Burns, that we might see ourselves as others see
us. What would become of us? Richardson, as we might expect, was highly
esteemed by Young of the 'Night Thoughts,' and by Johnson, to both of
whom he seems to have given substantial proofs of friendship. He wrote
the only number of the 'Rambler' which had a good sale, and helped
Johnson when under arrest for debt; Johnson repaid him by the phrase,
which long passed for the orthodox decision, that Richardson taught the
passions to move at the command of virtue. But the most delightful of
Richardson's friends was the irrepressible Colley Cibber. Mrs.
Pilkington, a disreputable adventuress, faintly remembered by her
relations to Swift, describes Cibber's reception of the unpublished
'Clarissa.' 'The dear gentleman did almost rave. When I told him that
she (Clarissa) must die, he said G---- d---- him if she should, and that
he should no longer believe Providence or eternal wisdom or goodness
governed the world if merit and innocence and beauty were to be so
destroyed. "Nay," added he, "my mind is so hurt with the thought of her
being violated, that were I to see her in heaven, sitting on the knees
of the blessed Virgin and crowned with glory, her sufferings would still
make me feel horror, horror distilled." These were his strongly
emphatical impressions.' Cibber's own letters are as lively as Mrs.
Pilkington's report of his talk. 'The delicious meal I made off Miss
Byron on Sunday last,' he says, 'has given me an appetite for another
slice of her, off from the spit, before she is served up to the public
table; if about five o'clock to-morrow afternoon be not inconvenient,
Mrs. Brown and I will come and nibble upon a bit more of her! And we
have grace after meat as well as before.' 'The devil take the insolent
goodness of your imagination!' exclaims the lively old buck, now past
eighty, and as well preserved as if he had never encountered Pope's
'scathing satire' (does satire ever 'scathe'?) or Fielding's rough
horseplay. One of Richardson's lady admirers saw Cibber flirting with
fine ladies at Tunbridge Wells in 1754 (he was born in 1671), and
miserable when he was neglected for a moment by the greatest _belle_ in
the society. He professed to be only seventy-seven!
Perhaps even Cibber was beaten in flattery by the 'minister of the
gospel' who thought that if some of Clarissa's letters had been found in
the Bible they would have been regarded as manifest proofs of divine
inspiration. But the more delightful incense came from the circle of
admiring young ladies who called him their dear papa; who passed long
days at his feet at Parson's Green; allowed him to escape to his
summer-house to add a letter to the growing volumes, and after an early
dinner persuaded him to read it aloud. Their eager discussions as to the
fate of the characters and the little points of morality which arose are
continued in his gossiping letters. When a child he had been the
confidant of tender-hearted maidens, and now he became a kind of
spiritual director. He was, as Miss Collier said, the 'only champion and
protector' of her sex. Women, and surely they must be good judges,
thought that he understood the feminine heart, as their descendants
afterwards attributed the same power to Balzac. The most attractive of
his feminine correspondents was Mrs. Klopstock, wife of the 'German
Milton,' who tells her only little love story with charming simplicity,
and thus lays her homage at the feet of Richardson. 'Honoured sir, will
you permit me to take this opportunity, in sending a letter to Dr.
Young, to address myself to you? It is very long that I wished to do it.
Having finished your "Clarissa" (oh, the heavenly book!), I would have
prayed you to write the history of a _manly_ Clarissa, but I had not
courage enough at that time. I should have it no more to-day, as this is
only my first English letter; but I have it! It may be because I am now
Klopstock's wife (I believe you know my husband by Mr. Hohorst), and
then I was only the single young girl. You have since written the manly
Clarissa without my prayer; oh, you have done it to the great joy and
thanks of all your happy readers! Now you can write no more, you must
write the history of an angel!'
Mrs. Klopstock died young; having had the happiness to find that
Richardson did not resent her intrusion, great author as he was. Another
correspondent, Lady Bradshaigh, wife of a Lancashire country gentleman,
took precautions which show what a halo then surrounded the author in
the eyes of his countrywomen. It was worth while to be an author then!
Lady Bradshaigh was a good housewife, it seems, but, having no children,
was able to devote some time to reading. She obtained a portrait of
Richardson, but altered the name to Dickenson, in order that no one
might suspect her of corresponding with an author. After reading the
first four volumes of 'Clarissa' (which were separately published), she
wrote under a feigned name to beg the author to alter the impending
catastrophe. She spoke as the mouthpiece of a 'multitude of admirers'
who desired to see Lovelace reformed and married to Clarissa. 'Sure you
will think it worth your while, sir, to save his soul!' she exclaims.
Richardson was too good an artist to spoil his tragedy; and was rewarded
by an account of her emotions on reading the last volumes. She laid the
book down in agonies, took it up again, shed a flood of tears, and threw
herself upon her couch to compose her mind. Her husband, who was
plodding after her, begged her to read no more. But she had promised
Richardson to finish the book. She nerved herself for the task; her
sleep was broken, she woke in tears during the night, and burst into
tears at her meals. Charmed by her delicious sufferings, she became
Richardson's friend for life, though it was long before she could muster
up courage to meet him face to face.
Yet Lady Bradshaigh seems to have been a sensible woman, and shows
vivacity and intelligence in some of her discussions with Richardson. If
he was not altogether spoilt by the flattery of so many excellent
women, we can only explain it by remembering that he did not become
famous till he was past fifty, and therefore past spoiling. One
peculiarity, indeed, is rather unpleasant in these letters. Richardson's
worshippers evidently felt that their deity was jealous, and made no
scruple of offering the base sacrifice of abuse of rival celebrities.
Richardson adopts their tone; he is always gibing at Fielding. '_I could
not help telling his sister_', he observes--a sister, too, whose merits
Fielding had praised with his usual generosity--'that I was equally
surprised at and concerned for his continuous lowness. Had your brother,
said I, been born in a stable or been a runner at a sponging-house we
should have thought him a genius,' but now! So another great writer came
just in time to be judged by Richardson. A bishop asked him, 'Who is
this Yorick,' who has, it seems, been countenanced by an 'ingenious
dutchess.' Richardson briefly replies that the bishop cannot have looked
into the books, 'execrable I cannot but call them.' Their only merit is
that they are 'too gross to be inflaming.' The history of the mutual
judgments upon each other of contemporary authors would be more amusing
than edifying.
Richardson should not have been so hard upon Sterne, for Sterne was in
some degree following Richardson's lead. 'What is the meaning,' asks
Lady Bradshaigh (about 1749) 'of the word _sentimental_, so much in
vogue among the polite both in town and country? Everything clever and
agreeable is comprehended in that word; but I am convinced a wrong
interpretation is given, because it is impossible everything clever and
agreeable can be so common as that word.' She has heard of a sentimental
man; a sentimental party, and a sentimental walk; and has been applauded
for calling a letter sentimental. I hope that the philological
dictionary may tell us what was the first appearance of a word which, in
this sense, marks an epoch in literature, and, indeed, in much else. I
find the word used in the old sense in 1752 in a pamphlet upon
'_Sentimental_ differences in point of faith,' that is, differences of
sentiment or opinion. When, a few years later, Sterne published his
'Sentimental Journey,' Wesley asks in his journal what is the meaning of
the new phrase, and observes (the illustration has lost its point) that
you might as well say _continental_. The appearance of the phrase
coincides with the appearance of the thing; for Richardson was the first
sentimentalist. We may trace the same movement elsewhere, though we need
not here speculate upon the cause. Pope's 'Essay on Man' is the
expression in verse of the dominant theology of the Deists and their
opponents, which was beginning to be condemned as dry and frigid. A
desire for something more 'sentimental' shows itself in Young's 'Night
Thoughts,' in Hervey's 'Meditations,' and appears in the religious
domain as Methodism. The literary historian has to trace the rise of the
same tendency in various places. In Germany, as we see from Mrs.
Klopstock's enthusiasm, the flame was only waiting for the spark.
Goethe, in his 'Wahrheit und Dichtung,' notices the influence of
Richardson's novels in Germany. They were among the predisposing causes
of Wertherism. In France, as I have said, Richardson found congenial
hearers, and Clarissa's soul doubtless transmigrated into the heroine of
the 'Nouvelle Héloïse.' Even in stubborn England, where Fielding's
masculine contempt for the whinings of 'Pamela' was more congenial, the
students of Richardson were prepared to receive 'Ossian' with
enthusiasm, and to be ecstatic over 'Tristram Shandy.' That Richardson
would have agreed with Johnson in regarding Rousseau as fit only for a
penal settlement, and that he actually considered Sterne to be
'execrable,' does not relieve him of the responsibility or deprive him
of the glory. He is not the only writer who has helped to evoke a spirit
which he would be the last to sanction. When he encouraged his admirably
proper young ladies to indulge in 'sentimentalism,' he could not tell
where so vague an impulse would ultimately land them. He was a sound
Tory, and an accepter of all established creeds. Sentimentalism with him
was merely a delight in cultivating the emotions, without any thought of
consequences; or, later, of cultivating them with the assumption that
they would continue to move, as he bade them, 'at the command of
virtue.' Once set in motion, they chose to take paths of their own; they
revolted against conventions, even those which he held most sacred; and
by degrees set up 'Nature' as an idol, and admired the ingenuous savage
instead of the respectable Clarissa, and denounced all corruption,
including, alas, the British constitution, and even the Thirty-nine
Articles, and put themselves at the disposal of all manner of
revolutionary audacities. But the little printer was safe in his grave,
and knew not of what strange developments he had been the ignorant
accomplice.