Part II. Being a Collection of Letters found in Mr. Campbell's Closet.

THE LIFE AND ROMANCES OF

MRS. ELIZA HAYWOOD

BY

GEORGE FRISBIE WHICHER, PH.D.

INSTRUCTOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

1915

_This Monograph has been approved by the Department of English and

Comparative Literature in Columbia University as a contribution to

knowledge worthy of publication._

A. H. THORNDIKE,

_Executive Officer_

PREFACE

The purpose of the following study is not to revive the reputation of a

forgotten author or to suggest that Mrs. Haywood may yet "come into her

own." For the lover of eighteenth century fashions her numerous pages

have indeed a stilted, early Georgian charm, but with the passing of

Ramillies wigs and velveteen small-clothes the popularity of her novels

vanished once for all. She had her world in her time, but that world and

time disappeared with the French Revolution [a]. Now even professed

students of the novel shrink from reading many of her seventy odd

volumes, nor can the infamous celebrity conferred by Pope's attack in

"The Dunciad" save her name from oblivion. But the significance of Mrs.

Haywood's contributions cannot safely be ignored. Her romances of

palpitating passion written between 1720 and 1730 formed a necessary

complement to Defoe's romances of adventure exactly as her Duncan

Campbell pamphlets supplied the one element lacking in his. The domestic

novels of her later life foreshadowed the work of Miss Burney and Miss

Austen, while her career as a woman of letters helped to open a new

profession to her sex. Since even the weakest link in the development of

a literary form is important, I have endeavored to provide future

historians of English fiction with a compact and accurate account of

this pioneer "lady novelist."

Hitherto the most complete summary of Mrs. Haywood's life and writings

has been Sir Sidney Lee's article in the "Dictionary of National

Biography," which adds much information not found in the earlier notices

in Baker's "Biographia Dramatica" and Chalmers' "Biographical

Dictionary." The experienced palates of Mr. Edmund Gosse and Mr. Austin

Dobson have tested the literary qualities respectively of the earlier

and later aspects of her work. Professor Walter Raleigh, Dr. Charlotte

E. Morgan, and Professor Saintsbury have briefly estimated the

importance of her share in the change from romance to novel.

Perhaps the main reason for the inadequacy of these notices lies in the

fact that no one library contains anything like a complete collection of

Mrs. Haywood's innumerable books. In pursuit of odd items I have

ransacked the British Museum, the Bodleian, and several minor literary

museums in England, and in America the libraries of Columbia, Harvard,

Yale, and Brown Universities, the Peabody Institute, and the University

of Chicago. The search has enabled me to correct many inaccuracies in

Miss Morgan's tentative list of prose fiction and even to supplement Mr.

Esdaile's admirable "List of English Tales and Prose Romances printed

before 1740," which mentions only works now extant in British libraries.

In the Bibliography I have adopted an alphabetical arrangement as most

convenient for ready reference. Under the various editions of each book

I have referred to libraries, English or American, where copies are to

be found. Or when no copy was to be had, I have referred to

advertisements, either in the newspapers of the Burney Collection, in

the "Gentleman's Magazine," the "Monthly," or the "Critical," or in the

catalogues of modern booksellers. In the Chronological List I have dated

each work from the earliest advertisement of its publication.

Naturally I have incurred obligations to scholars who have previously

passed over the same little-cultivated territory. Mr. Arundell Esdaile

of the British Museum staff both facilitated the course of my

investigations in England by valuable suggestions and cheered it by his

cordial hospitality. To Professors R.P. Utter of Amherst, J.M. Clapp of

Lake Forest College, A.H. Upham of Miami University, and A.H. Thorndike

of Columbia I am indebted for friendly advice, encouragement, and

helpful criticism. And above all my thanks are due to Professor W.P.

Trent, whose love of eighteenth century letters suggested the subject of

this research, whose sage and kindly supervision fostered the work

through every stage in its development, and for whose forthcoming "Life

and Times of Daniel Defoe" this monograph is intended as a footnote.

G.F.W.

URBANA, ILLINOIS.

[a] Through the kindness of Professor J.M. Clapp I am provided with the

following evidence of the decline of Eliza Haywood's popularity. In

W. Bent's _General Catalogue of Books_ (1786) fourteen of her

productions are advertised, namely: _Works_, 4 vols; _Clementina;

Dalinda; Epistles for the Ladies; La Belle Assemblée; Female

Spectator; Fortunate Foundlings; Fruitless Enquiry; Jemmy and Jenny

Jessamy; Betsy Thoughtless; The Husband; Invisible Spy; Life's

Progress through the Passions; Virtuous Villager_. In 1791 only

four--_Clementina; Dalinda; Female Spectator; Jemmy and Jenny

Jessamy_--appeared in Bent's _London Catalogue_, and of these the

first two had fallen in value from 3/6 to 3 shillings.

CONTENTS

I. ELIZA HAYWOOD'S LIFE

II. SHORT ROMANCES OF PASSION

III. THE DUNCAN CAMPBELL PAMPHLETS

IV. SECRET HISTORIES AND SCANDAL NOVELS

V. THE HEROINE OF "THE DUNCIAD"

VI. LETTERS AND ESSAYS

VII. LATER FICTION: THE DOMESTIC NOVEL

VIII. CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST

INDEX

THE LIFE AND ROMANCES OF MRS. ELIZA HAYWOOD

CHAPTER I

ELIZA HAYWOOD'S LIFE

Autobiography was almost the only form of writing not attempted by Eliza

Haywood in the course of her long career as an adventuress in letters.

Unlike Mme de Villedieu or Mrs. Manley she did not publish the story of

her life romantically disguised as the Secret History of Eliza, nor was

there One of the Fair Sex (real or pretended) to chronicle her "strange

and surprising adventures" or to print her passion-stirring epistles, as

had happened with Mrs. Aphra Behn's fictitious exploits and amorous

correspondence[1]. Indeed the first biographer of Mrs. Haywood[2] hints

that "from a supposition of some improper liberties being taken with her

character after death by the intermixture of truth and falsehood with

her history," the apprehensive dame had herself suppressed the facts of

her life by laying a "solemn injunction on a person who was well

acquainted with all the particulars of it, not to communicate to any one

the least circumstance relating to her." The success of her precaution

is evident in the scantiness of our information about her. The few

details recorded in the "Biographia Dramatica" can be amplified only by

a tissue of probabilities. Consequently Mrs. Haywood's one resemblance

to Shakespeare is the obscurity that covers the events of her life.

She was born in London, probably in 1693, and her father, a man by the

name of Fowler, was a small shop-keeper.[3] She speaks vaguely of having

received an education beyond that afforded to the generality of her sex.

Her marriage to Valentine Haywood,[4] a clergyman at least fifteen years

older than his spouse, took place before she was twenty, for the

Register of St. Mary Aldermary records on 3 December, 1711, the

christening of Charles, son of Valentine Haywood, clerk, and Elizabeth

his wife. Her husband held at this time a small living in Norfolk, and

had recently been appointed lecturer of St. Mathews, Friday Street.

Whether the worthy cleric resided altogether in London and discharged

his duties in the country by proxy, or whether Mrs. Haywood, like

Tristram Shandy's mother, enjoyed the privilege of coming to town only

on certain interesting occasions, are questions which curious research

fails to satisfy. At any rate, one of the two children assigned to her

by tradition was born, as we have seen, in London.

No other manifestation of their nuptial happiness appeared until 7

January, 1721, on which date the "Post Boy" contained an Advertisement

of the elopement of Mrs. Eliz. Haywood, wife of Rev. Valentine

Haywood.[5] The causes of Eliza's flight are unknown. Our only knowledge

of her temperament in her early life comes from a remark by Nichols that

the character of Sappho in the "Tatler"[6] may be "assigned

with ...probability and confidence, to Mrs. Elizabeth Heywood, who ...was

in all respects just such a character as is exhibited here." Sappho is

described by Steele as "a fine lady, who writes verses, sings, dances,

and can say and do whatever she pleases, without the imputation of any

thing that can injure her character; for she is so well known to have no

passion but self-love, or folly but affectation, that now, upon any

occasion, they only cry, 'It is her way!' and 'That is so like her!'

without farther reflection." She quotes a "wonderfully just" passage

from Milton, calls a licentious speech from Dryden's "State of

Innocence" an "odious thing," and says "a thousand good things at

random, but so strangely mixed, that you would be apt to say, all her

wit is mere good luck, and not the effect of reason and judgment." In

the second paper Sappho quotes examples of generous love from Suckling

and Milton, but takes offence at a letter containing some sarcastic

remarks on married women. We know that Steele was personally acquainted

with Mrs. Manley, and it is possible that he knew Mrs. Haywood, since

she later dedicated a novel to him. With some reservation, then, we may

accept this sketch as a fair likeness. As a young matron of seventeen or

eighteen she was evidently a lively, unconventional, opinionated

gadabout fond of the company of similar She-romps, who exchanged verses

and specimen letters with the lesser celebrities of the literary world

and perpetuated the stilted romantic traditions of the Matchless Orinda

and her circle. A woman of her independence of mind, we may imagine,

could not readily submit to the authority of an arbitrary, orthodox

clergyman husband.

Mrs. Haywood's writings are full of the most lively scenes of marital

infelicity due to causes ranging from theological disputes to flagrant

licentiousness. Her enemies were not so charitable as to attribute her

flight from her husband to any reason so innocent as incompatibility of

temper or discrepancy of religious views. The position of ex-wife was

neither understood nor tolerated by contemporary society. In the words

of a favorite quotation from "Jane Shore":

"But if weak Woman chance to go astray,

If strongly charm'd she leave the thorny Way,

And in the softer Paths of Pleasure stray,

Ruin ensues, Reproach and endless Shame;

And one false Step entirely damns her Fame:

In vain, with Tears, the Loss she may deplore,

In vain look back to what she was before,

She sets, like Stars that fall, to rise no more!"

Eliza Haywood, however, after leaving the thorny way of matrimony,

failed to carry out the laureate's metaphor. Having less of the fallen

star in her than Mr. Rowe imagined, and perhaps more of the hen, she

refused to set, but resolutely faced the world, and in spite of all

rules of decorum, tried to earn a living for herself and her two

children, if indeed as Pope's slander implies, she had children to

support.

The ways in which a woman could win her bread outside the pale of

matrimony were extremely limited. A stage career, connected with a

certain degree of infamy, had been open to the sex since Restoration

times, and writing for the theatre had been successfully practiced by

Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs. Pix, and Mrs. Davys. The

first two female playwrights mentioned had produced beside their

dramatic works a number of pieces of fiction, and Mrs. Mary Hearne, Mrs.

Jane Barker, and Mrs. Sarah Butler had already gained a milder notoriety

as _romancières_. Poetry, always the elegant amusement of polite

persons, had not yet proved profitable enough to sustain a woman of

letters. Eliza Haywood was sufficiently catholic in her taste to attempt

all these means of gaining reputation and a livelihood, and tried in

addition a short-lived experiment as a publisher. Beside these literary

pursuits we know not what obscure means for support she may have found

from time to time.

Her first thought, however, was apparently of the theatre, where she had

already made her debut on the stage of the playhouse in Smock Alley

(Orange Street), Dublin during the season of 1715, as Chloe in "Timon of

Athens; or, the Man-Hater."[7] One scans the _dramatis personae_ of

"Timon" in vain for the character of Chloe, until one recalls that the

eighteenth century had no liking for Shakespeare undefiled. The version

used by the Theatre Royal was, of course, the adaptation by Thomas

Shadwell, in which Chloe appears chiefly in Acts II and III as the maid

and confidant of the courtesan Melissa. Both parts were added by Og. The

rôle of Cleon was taken by Quin, later an interpreter of Mrs. Haywood's

own plays. But if she formed a connection with either of the London

theatres after leaving her husband, the engagement was soon broken off,

and her subsequent appearances as an actress in her comedy of "A Wife to

be Lett" (1723) and in Hatchett's "Rival Father" (1730) were due in the

one case to an accident and in the other to her friendship for the

playwright.

She herself, according to the "Biographia Dramatica," when young

"dabbled in dramatic poetry; but with no great success." The first of

her plays, a tragedy entitled "The Fair Captive," was acted the

traditional three times at Lincoln's Inn Fields, beginning 4 March,

1721.[8] Aaron Hill contributed a friendly epilogue. Quin took the part

of Mustapha, the despotic vizier, and Mrs. Seymour played the heroine.

On 16 November it was presented a fourth time for the author's

benefit,[9] then allowed to die. Shortly after the first performance the

printed copy made its appearance. In the "Advertisement to the Reader"

Mrs. Haywood exposes the circumstances of her turning playwright,

naïvely announcing:

"To attempt any thing in Vindication of the following Scenes, wou'd

cost me more Time than the Composing 'em took me up...

"This Tragedy was originally writ by Capt. Hurst, and by him deliver'd

to Mr. Rich, to be acted soon after the opening of the New House;[10]

but the Season being a little too far elaps'd for the bringing it on

then, and the Author oblig'd to leave the Kingdom, Mr. Rich became the

Purchaser of it, and the Winter following order'd it into Rehearsal:

but found it so unfit for Representation, that for a long time he laid

aside all thoughts of making any thing of it, till last January he

gave me the History of his Bargain, and made me some Proposals

concerning the new modelling it: but however I was prevail'd upon, I

cannot say my Inclination had much share in my Consent.... On Reading,

I found I had much more to do than I expected; every Character I was

oblig'd to find employment for, introduce one entirely new, without

which it had been impossible to have guessed at the Design of the

Play; and in fine, change the Diction so wholly, that, excepting in

the Parts of Alphonso and Isabella, there remains not twenty lines of

the Original."

The plot, which is too involved to be analyzed, centers about the

efforts of Alphonso to redeem his beloved Isabella from, the harem of

the Vizier Mustapha. Spaniards, Turks, keepers and inhabitants of the

harem, and a "young lady disguis'd in the habit of an Eunuch," mingle in

inextricable intrigue. Some of the worst absurdities and the most

bathetic lines occur in the parts of the two lovers for which Mrs.

Haywood disclaims responsibility, but even the best passages of the play

add nothing to the credit of the reviser. Her next dramatic venture was

produced after her novels had gained some vogue with the town, as the

Prologue spoken by Mr. Theophilus Cibber indicates.

"Criticks! be dumb tonight--no Skill display;

A dangerous Woman-Poet wrote the Play: ...

Measure her Force, by her known Novels, writ

With manly Vigour, and with Woman's wit.

Then tremble, and depend, if ye beset her,

She, who can talk so well, may act yet better."

The fair success achieved by "A Wife to be Lett: A Comedy," acted at

Drury Lane three times, commencing 12 August, 1723,[11] is said to have

been due largely to the curiosity of the public to see the author, who

by reason of the indisposition of an actress performed in person the

part of the wife, Mrs. Graspall, a character well suited to her romping

disposition. It is difficult to imagine how the play could have

succeeded on its own merits, for the intricacies of the plot tax the

attention even of the reader. A certain Ann Minton, however, revived the

piece in the guise of "The Comedy of a Wife to be Lett, or, the Miser

Cured, compressed into Two Acts" (1802).

Apparently the reception of her comedy was not sufficiently encouraging

to induce Mrs. Haywood to continue writing plays, for six years elapsed

before she made a third effort in dramatic writing with a tragedy

entitled, "Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lunenburgh," which was first

produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields on 4 March, 1729,[12] and shortly

afterward published with a dedication to Frederick Lewis, Prince of

Wales. The intention of the dedication was obviously to bid for royal

patronage, but the intended victim was too astute to be caught. In

eulogizing the Emperor Frederick (_c_. 1400) the author found abundant

opportunity to praise by implication his namesake, but unfortunately for

the success of the play none of the royal family "vouchsafed to honour

it with their Presence." Mrs. Haywood complains that hers "was the only

new Performance this Season, which had not received a Sanction from some

of that illustrious Line," and the "unthinking Part of the Town"

followed the fashion set by royalty. Unlike "The Fair Captive," which

suffered from a plethora of incidents, Mrs. Haywood's second tragedy

contains almost nothing in its five acts but rant. An analysis of the

plot is but a summary of conversations.

Act I. The German princes hail Frederick, recently elected Emperor.

Count Waldec and Ridolpho, in league with the Archbishop of Metz,

conspire against him. Waldec urges his sister Adelaid to marry the

gallant Wirtemberg. Sophia, her woman and confidant, also urges her to

marry, but Adelaid can only reply, "I charge thee Peace, Nor join such

distant Sounds as Joy and Wirtemberg," and during the rest of the act

proclaims the anguish inspired by her unrequited passion for Frederick,

married three years before to a Saxon princess.

Act II. The conspirators plan to kill Frederick. Adelaid reproaches him

for abandoning her. He welcomes his imperial consort, Anna, and takes

occasion to deliver many magnanimous sentiments.

Act III. Adelaid declares that she cannot love Wirtemberg. Waldec

excites the impatient lover to jealousy of Frederick. Ridolpho is

banished court for murder.

Act IV. Frederick is distressed by Wirtemberg's discontent. The Empress,

seeking to learn the reason for it, is infected by Wirtemberg's

suspicions. Adelaid overhears Ridolpho and Waldec plotting to slay

Frederick, but hesitates to accuse her own brother. Wirtemberg

reproaches her for her supposed yielding to Frederick, and resolves to

leave her forever.

Act V. Adelaid, in order to warn him, sends to ask the Emperor to visit

her. Waldec intercepts the letter and resolves to murder Frederick in

her chamber. Wirtemberg learns that he has been duped and defends the

Emperor. Waldec and Ridolpho are killed, though not before they succeed

in mortally wounding Frederick, who dies amid tears.

Genest says with truth that the love scenes are dull, and that the

subject is not well calculated for dramatic representation. The play was

acted only the usual three times, and fully deserved the deep damnation

of its taking off.

In 1730 Mrs. Haywood took part in the "Rival Father, or the Death of

Achilles," written by her friend, the actor and playwright William

Hatchett, and performed at the Haymarket.[13] Three years later she

joined with him to produce an adaptation of Fielding's "Tragedy of

Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great" on the model of

Gay's popular "Beggar's Opera." The "Opera of Operas" follows its

original closely with a number of condensations and omissions. Almost

the only additions made by the collaborators were the short lyrics,

which were set to music by the ingenious Mr. Frederick Lampe.[14] The

Hatchett-Haywood version was acted at the Haymarket on 31 May, 1733, and

according to Genest, was repeated eleven times at least with Mrs. Clive

as Queen Dollalolla.[15] It was published immediately. On 9 November a

performance was given at Drury Lane. Although unusually successful, it

was Mrs. Haywood's last dramatic offering.[16]

The aspiring authoress apparently never found in dramatic writing a

medium suitable to her genius, and even less was she attracted by a

stage career. The reasons for her abandoning the theatre to develop her

powers as a writer of fiction are stated in a characteristic letter

still filed among the State Papers.[17]

_Sir_

The Stage not answering my Expectation, and the averseness of my

Relations to it, has made me Turn my Genius another Way; I have

Printed some Little things which have mett a Better Reception then

they Deservd, or I Expected: and have now Ventur'd on a Translation to

be done by Subscription, the Proposalls whereof I take the Liberty to

send You: I have been so much us'd to Receive favours from You that I

can make No Doubt of y'r forgiveness for this freedom, great as it is,

and that You will alsoe become one of those Persons, whose Names are a

Countenance to my undertaking. I am mistress of neither words nor

happy Turn of thought to Thank You as I ought for the many Unmeritted

favours You have Conferr'd on me, but beg You to believe all that a

gratefull Soul can feel, mine does who am Sir

Yo'r most humble &

most Obedient Serv't

ELIZA HAYWOOD.

August ye 5th 1720

Enclosed with the letter were "Proposals For Printing by Subscription A

Translation from the French of the Famous Monsieur Bursault Containing

Ten Letters from a Lady of Quality to a Chevalier."[18] The work thus

heralded was published in the latter part of 1720 by subscription--

"three shillings each Book in Quires, or five Shillings bound in Calf,

Gilt Back"--a method never again employed by Mrs. Haywood, though in

this case it must have succeeded fairly well. Three hundred and nine

names appeared on her list of subscribers, of which one hundred and

twenty-three were women's. Few subscribers of either sex were

distinguished. There were, however, that universal patron of minor

authors, George Bubb, Esq., later the Doddington to whom Thomson

dedicated his "Summer"; Mrs. Barker, the novelist; Aaron Hill; a Mr.

Osborne, possibly the bookseller whose name was afterward infamously

connected with Eliza's in "The Dunciad"; Charles de La Faye, the

under-secretary of state with whom Defoe corresponded; and a sprinkling

of aristocratic titles.

The publisher of the letters was William Rufus Chetwood, later the

prompter at Drury Lane Theatre, but then just commencing bookseller at

the sign of Cato's Head, Covent Garden. He had already brought out for

Mrs. Haywood the first effort of her genius, a romantic tale entitled

"Love in Excess: or, the Fatal Enquiry." We have the author's testimony

that the three parts "mett a Better Reception then they Deservd," and

indeed the piece was extraordinarily successful, running through no less

than six separate editions before its inclusion in her collected "Secret

Histories, Novels and Poems" in 1725. On the last page of "Letters from

a Lady of Quality to a Chevalier" Chetwood had also advertised for

speedy publication "a Book entitled, The Danger of giving way to

Passion, in Five Exemplary Novels: First, The British Recluse, or the

Secret History of Cleomira, supposed dead. Second, The Injur'd Husband,

or the Mistaken Resentment. Third, Lasselia, or the Unfortunate

Mistress. Fourth, The Rash Resolve, or the Untimely Discovery. Fifth,

Idalia, or the Self-abandon'd.[19] Written by Mrs. Eliza Haywood."

During the next three years the five novels were issued singly by

Chetwood with the help of other booksellers, usually Daniel Browne, Jr.,

and Samuel Chapman. This pair, or James Roberts, Chetwood's successor,

published most of Mrs. Haywood's early writings. The staple of her

output during the first decade of authorship was the short amatory

romance like "Love in Excess" and the "exemplary novels" just mentioned.

These exercises in fiction were evidently composed _currente calamo_,

with little thought and less revision, for an eager and undiscriminating

public. Possibly, as Mr. Gosse conjectures,[20] they were read chiefly

by milliners and other women on the verge of literacy. But though

persons of solid education avoided reading novels and eastern tales as

they might the drinking of drams, it is certain that no one of scanty

means could have afforded Mrs. Haywood's slender octavos at the price of

one to three shillings. The Lady's Library ("Spectator" No. 37)

containing beside numerous romances "A Book of Novels" and "The New

Atalantis, with a Key to it," which last Lady Mary Montagu also enjoyed,

and the dissolute country-gentleman's daughters ("Spectator" No. 128)

who "read Volumes of Love-Letters and Romances to their Mother," a

_ci-devant_ coquette, give us perhaps a more accurate idea of the woman

novelist's public. Doubtless Mrs. Haywood's wares were known to the more

frothy minds of the polite world and to the daughters of middle-class

trading families, such as the sisters described in Defoe's "Religious

Courtship," whose taste for fashionable plays and novels was soon to

call the circulating library into being.

Beside the proceeds arising from the sale of her works, Mrs. Haywood

evidently expected and sometimes received the present of a guinea or so

in return for a dedication. Though patrons were not lacking for her

numerous works, it does not appear that her use of their names was

always authorized. In putting "The Arragonian Queen" under the

protection of Lady Frances Lumley, in fact, the author confessed that

she had not the happiness of being known to the object of her praise,

but wished to be the first to felicitate her publicly upon her nuptials.

We may be sure that the offering of "Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-

Lunenburgh" to the hero's namesake, Frederick, Prince of Wales, was both

unsanctioned and unacknowledged. Sometimes, however, the writer's

language implies that she had already experienced the bounty of her

patron, while in the case of the novel dedicated to Sir Richard Steele

at a time when his health and credit were fast giving way, Eliza can

hardly be accused of interested motives. Apparently sincere, too, though

addressed to a wealthy widow, was the tribute to Lady Elizabeth Germain

prefixed to "The Fruitless Enquiry"; and at least one other of Mrs.

Haywood's productions is known to have been in Lady Betty's library. But

these instances are decidedly exceptional. Usually the needy novelist's

dedications were made up of servile adulation and barefaced begging.

With considerable skill in choosing a favorable moment she directed a

stream of panegyric upon William Yonge (later Sir) within two months

after his appointment as one of the commissioners of the treasury in

Great Britain. Soon after Sir Thomas Lombe was made a knight, the wife

of that rich silk weaver had the pleasure of seeing her virtues and her

new title in print. And most remarkable of all, Lady Elizabeth Henley,

who eloped with a rake early in 1728, received Mrs. Haywood's

congratulations upon the event in the dedication of "The Agreeable

Caledonian," published in June, though if we may trust Mrs. Delany's

account of the matter, the bride must already have had time for

repentance. Even grief, the specialist in the study of the passions

knew, might loosen the purse strings, and accordingly she took the

liberty to condole with Col. Stanley upon the loss of his wife while

entreating his favor for "The Masqueraders." But of all her dedications

those addressed to her own sex were the most melting, and from their

frequency were evidently the most fruitful.

The income derived from patronage, however, was at best uncertain and

necessitated many applications. To the public, moreover, a novel meant

nothing if not something new. Eliza Haywood's productiveness, therefore,

was enormous. When she had settled to her work, the authoress could

produce little pieces, ranging from sixty to nearly two hundred pages in

length, with extraordinary rapidity. In 1724, for instance, a year of

tremendous activity, she rushed into print no less than ten original

romances, beside translating half of a lengthy French work, "La Belle

Assemblée" by Mme de Gomez. At this time, too, her celebrity had become

so great that "The Prude, a Novel, written by a Young Lady" was

dedicated to her, just as Mrs. Hearne at the beginning of her career had

put a romance, "The Lover's Week," under the protection of the famous

Mrs. Manley. Between 1720 and 1730 Mrs. Haywood wrote, beside plays and

translations, thirty-eight works of her own composing, one in two stout

volumes and several in two or more parts. If we may judge by the number

and frequency of editions, most of the indefatigable scribbler's tales

found a ready sale, while the best of them, such as "Idalia" (1723),

"The Fatal Secret" (1724), "The Mercenary Lover" (1726), "The Fruitless

Enquiry" and "Philidore and Placentia" (1727), gained for her not a

little applause.

Nor was the young adventuress in letters unhailed by literary men. Aaron

Hill immediately befriended her by writing an epilogue for her first

play and another of Hill's circle, the irresponsible Richard Savage,

attempted to "paint the Wonders of Eliza's Praise" in verses prefixed to

"Love in Excess" and "The Rash Resolve" (1724).[21]

Along with Savage's first complimentary poem were two other effusions,

in one of which an "Atheist to Love's Power" acknowledged his conversion

through the force of Eliza's revelation of the tender passion, while the

other expressed with less rapture the same idea. But it remained for

James Sterling, the friend of Concanen, to state most vigorously the

contemporary estimate of Mrs. Haywood and her early writings.[22] "Great

Arbitress of Passion!" he exclaims,

"Persuasion waits on all your bright Designs,

And where you point the varying Soul inclines:

See! Love and Friendship, the fair Theme inspires

We glow with Zeal, we melt in soft Desires!

Thro' the dire Labyrinth of Ills we share

The kindred Sorrows of the gen'rous Pair;

Till, pleas'd, rewarded Vertue we behold,

Shine from the Furnace pure as tortur'd Gold:"

of _Love in Excess_, Part II, and at the front of each successive

edition, have never been reprinted. [Transcriber's note: wording in

original.] A specimen of his praise follows,

"Thy Prose in sweeter Harmony refines,

Than Numbers flowing thro' the Muse's Lines;

What Beauty ne'er could melt, thy Touches fire,

And raise a Musick that can Love inspire;

Soul-thrilling Accents all our Senses wound,

And strike with Softness, whilst they charm with Sound!

When thy Count pleads, what Fair his Suit can fly?

Or when thy Nymph laments, what Eyes are dry?

Ev'n Nature's self in Sympathy appears,

Yields Sigh for Sigh, and melts in equal Tears;

For such Descriptions thus at once can prove

The Force of Language, and the Sweets of Love.

You sit like Heav'n's bright Minister on High,

Command the throbbing Breast, and watry Eye,

And, as our captive Spirits ebb and flow,

Smile at the Tempests you have rais'd below:

The Face of Guilt a Flush of Vertue wears,

And sudden burst the involuntary Tears:

Honour's sworn Foe, the Libertine with Shame,

Descends to curse the sordid lawless Flame;

The tender Maid here learns Man's various Wiles,

Rash Youth, hence dread the Wanton's venal Smiles--

Sure 'twas by brutal Force of envious Man,

First Learning's base Monopoly began;

He knew your Genius, and refus'd his Books,

Nor thought your Wit less fatal than your Looks.

Read, proud Usurper, read with conscious Shame,

Pathetic _Behn_, or _Mauley's_ greater Name;

Forget their Sex, and own when _Haywood_ writ,

She clos'd the fair Triumvirate of Wit;

Born to delight as to reform the Age,

She paints Example thro' the shining Page;

Satiric Precept warms the moral Tale,

And Causticks burn where the mild Balsam fails; [_sic_]

A Task reserv'd for her, to whom 'tis given,

To stand the Proxy of vindictive Heav'n!"

Amid the conventional extravagance of this panegyric exist some useful

grains of criticism. One of the most clearly expressed and continually

reiterated aims of prose fiction, as of other species of writing from

time immemorial, was that of conveying to the reader a moral through the

agreeable channel of example. This exemplary purpose, inherited by

eighteenth century novelists from Cervantes and from the French

romances, was asserted again and again in Mrs. Haywood's prefaces,[23]

while the last paragraphs of nearly all her tales were used to convey an

admonition or to proclaim the value of the story as a "warning to the

youth of both sexes." To modern readers these pieces seem less

successful illustrations of fiction made didactic, than of didacticism

dissolved and quite forgot in fiction, but Sterling and other eulogists

strenuously supported the novelist's claim to moral usefulness.[24] The

pill of improvement supposed to be swallowed along with the sweets of

diversion hardly ever consisted of good precepts and praiseworthy

actions, but usually of a warning or a horrible example of what to

avoid.[25] As a necessary corollary, the more striking and sensational

the picture of guilt, the more efficacious it was likely to prove in the

cause of virtue. So in the Preface to "Lasselia" (1723), published to

"remind the unthinking Part of the World, how dangerous it is to give

way to Passion," the writer hopes that her unexceptionable intent "will

excuse the too great Warmth, which may perhaps appear in some particular

Pages; for without the Expression being invigorated in some measure

proportionate to the Subject, 'twou'd be impossible for a Reader to be

sensible how far it touches him, or how probable it is that he is

falling into those Inadvertencies which the Examples I relate wou'd

caution him to avoid." As a woman, too, Mrs. Haywood was excluded from

"Learning's base Monopoly," but not from an intuitive knowledge of the

passions, in which respect the sex were, and are, thought the superiors

of insensible man.[26] Consequently her chief excellence in the opinion

of her readers lay in that power to "command the throbbing Breast and

watry Eye" previously recognized by the Volunteer Laureate and her other

admirers. She could tell a story in clear and lively, if not always

correct and elegant English, and she could describe the ecstasies and

agonies of passion in a way that seemed natural and convincing to an

audience nurtured on French _romans à longue haleine_ and heroic plays.

Unworthy as they may seem when placed beside the subsequent triumphs of

the novel, her short romances nevertheless kept alive the spirit of

idealistic fiction and stimulated an interest in the emotions during an

age when even poetry had become the handmaid of reason.

But although Eliza had few rivals as an "arbitress of the passions," she

did not enjoy an equal success as the "proxy of vindictive heaven." When

she attempted to apply the caustic of satire instead of the mild balsam

of moral tales, she speedily made herself enemies. From the very first

indeed she had been persecuted by those who had an inveterate habit of

detecting particular persons aimed at in the characters of her

fictions,[27] and even without their aspersions her path was

sufficiently hard.

"It would be impossible to recount the numerous Difficulties a Woman

has to struggle through in her Approach to Fame: If her Writings are

considerable enough to make any Figure in the World, Envy pursues her

with unweary'd Diligence; and if, on the contrary, she only writes

what is forgot, as soon as read, Contempt is all the Reward, her Wish

to please, excites; and the cold Breath of Scorn chills the little

Genius she has, and which, perhaps, cherished by Encouragement, might,

in Time, grow to a Praise-worthy Height."[28]

Unfortunately the cold breath of scorn, though it may have stunted her

genius, could not prevent it from bearing unseasonable fruit. Her

contributions to the Duncan Campbell literature, "A Spy upon the

Conjurer" (1724) and "The Dumb Projector" (1725), in which the romancer

added a breath of intrigue to the atmosphere of mystery surrounding the

wizard, opened the way for more notorious appeals to the popular taste

for personal scandal. In the once well known "Memoirs of a Certain

Island adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia" (1725-6) and the no less

infamous "Secret History of the Present Intrigues of the Court of

Carimania" (1727) Mrs. Haywood found a fit repertory for daringly

licentious gossip of the sort made fashionable reading by Mrs. Manley's

"Atalantis." But though the _romans à clef_ of Mrs. Haywood, like the

juvenile compositions of Mr. Stepney, might well have "made grey authors

blush," her chief claim to celebrity undoubtedly depends upon her

inclusion in the immortal ranks of Grubstreet. Her scandal novels did

not fail to arouse the wrath of persons in high station, and Alexander

Pope made of the writer's known, though never acknowledged connection

with pieces of the sort a pretext for showing his righteous zeal in the

cause of public morality and his resentment of a fancied personal

insult. The torrent of filthy abuse poured upon Eliza in "The Dunciad"

seems to have seriously damaged her literary reputation. During the next

decade she wrote almost nothing, and after her curious allegorical

political satire in the form of a romance, the "Adventures of Eovaai"

(1736), the authoress dropped entirely out of sight. For six years no

new work came from her pen. What she was doing during this time remains

a puzzle. She could hardly have been supported by the rewards of her

previous labors, for the gains of the most successful novelists at this

period were small. If she became a journalist or turned her energies

toward other means of making a livelihood, no evidence of the fact has

yet been discovered. It is possible that (to use the current euphemism)

'the necessity of her affairs may have obliged her to leave London and

even England until creditors became less insistent. There can be little

doubt that Mrs. Haywood visited the Continent at least once, but the

time of her going is uncertain.[29]

When she renewed her literary activity in 1742 with a translation of "La

Paysanne Parvenue" by the Chevalier de Mouhy, Mrs. Haywood did not

depend entirely upon her pen for support. A notice at the end of the

first volume of "The Virtuous Villager, or Virgin's Victory," as her

work was called, advertised "new books sold by Eliza Haywood, Publisher,

at the Sign of Fame in Covent Garden." Her list of publications was not

extensive, containing, in fact, only two items: I. "The Busy-Body; or

Successful Spy; being the entertaining History of Mons. Bigand ... The

whole containing great Variety of Adventures, equally instructive and

diverting," and II. "Anti-Pamela, or Feign'd Innocence detected, in a

Series of Syrena's Adventures: A Narrative which has really its

Foundation in Truth and Nature ... Publish'd as a necessary Caution to

all young Gentlemen. The Second Edition."[30] Mrs. Haywood's venture as

a publisher was transitory, for we hear no more of it. But taken

together with a letter from her to Sir Hans Sloane,[31] recommending

certain volumes of poems that no gentleman's library ought to be

without, the bookselling enterprise shows that the novelist had more

strings than one to her bow.

By one expedient or another Mrs. Haywood managed to exist fourteen years

longer and during that time wrote the best remembered of her works. Copy

from her pen supplied her publisher, Thomas Gardner, with a succession

of novels modeled on the French fiction of Marivaux and De Mouhy, with

periodical essays reminiscent of Addison, with moral letters, and with

conduct books of a nondescript but popular sort. The hard-worked

authoress even achieved a new reputation on the success of her

"Fortunate Foundlings" (1744), "Female Spectator" (1744-6), and her most

ambitious novel, "The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless" (1751). The

productions known to be hers do not certainly represent the entire

output of her industry during this period, for since "The Dunciad" her

writing had been almost invariably anonymous. One or two equivocal bits

of secret history and scandal-mongering may probably be attributed to

her at the very time when in "Epistles for the Ladies" (1749-50) she was

advocating sobriety, religion, and morality. These suspected lapses into

her old habits should serve as seasoning to the statement of the

"Biographia Dramatica" that Eliza Haywood was "in mature age, remarkable

for the most rigid and scrupulous decorum, delicacy, and prudence, both

with respect to her conduct and conversation." If she was not too old a

dog to learn new tricks, she at least did not forget her old ones. Of

her circumstances during her last years little can be discovered. "The

Female Spectator," in emulation of its famous model, commences with a

pen-portrait of the writer, which though not intended as an accurate

picture, certainly contains no flattering lines. It shows the essayist

both conscious of the faults of her youth and willing to make capital

out of them.

"As a Proof of my Sincerity, I shall, in the first place, assure him

[the reader], that for my own Part I never was a Beauty, and am now

very far from being young; (a Confession he will find few of my Sex

ready to make): I shall also acknowledge that I have run through as

many Scenes of Vanity and Folly as the greatest Coquet of them all.--

Dress, Equipage, and Flattery were the Idols of my Heart.--I should

have thought that Day lost, which did not present me with some new

Opportunity of shewing myself.--My Life, for some Years, was a

continued Round of what I then called Pleasure, and my whole Time

engross'd by a Hurry of promiscuous Diversions.--But whatever

Inconveniences such a manner of Conduct has brought upon myself, I

have this Consolation, to think that the Publick may reap some Benefit

from it:--The Company I kept was not, indeed, always so well chosen as

it ought to have been, for the sake of my own Interest or Reputation;

but then it was general, and by Consequence furnished me, not only

with the Knowledge of many Occurrences, which otherwise I had been

ignorant of, but also enabled me ...to see into the most secret

Springs which gave rise to the Actions I had either heard, or been

Witness of--to judge of the various Passions of the Human Mind, and

distinguish those imperceptible Degrees by which they become Masters

of the Heart, and attain the Dominion over Reason....

"With this Experience, added to a Genius tolerably extensive, and an

Education more liberal than is ordinarily allowed to Persons of my

Sex, I flatter'd myself that it might be in my Power to be in some

measure both useful and entertaining to the Publick."

A less favorable glimpse of the authoress and her activities is afforded

by a notice of a questionable publication called "A Letter from H---

G--- g, Esq." (1750), and dealing with the movements of the Young

Chevalier. It was promptly laid to her door by the "Monthly Review."[32]

"The noted Mrs. H--- d, author of four volumes of novels well known,

and other romantic performances, is the reputed author of this

pretended letter; which was privately conveyed to the shops, no

publisher caring to appear in it: but the government, less scrupulous,

took care to make the piece taken notice of, by arresting the female

veteran we have named; who has been some weeks in custody of a

messenger, who also took up several pamphlet-sellers, and about 800

copies of the book; which last will now probably be rescued from a

fate they might otherwise have undergone, that of being turned into

waste-paper, ... by the famous fiery nostrum formerly practised by the

physicians of the soul in _Smithfield_, and elsewhere; and now as

successfully used in _treasonable_, as then in _heretical_ cases."

This unceremonious handling of the "female veteran," in marked contrast

to the courteous, though not always favorable treatment of Mrs.

Haywood's legitimate novels, suggests the possibility that even the

reviewers were ignorant of the authorship of "The History of Jemmy and

Jenny Jessamy" (1753) and "The Invisible Spy" (1755). Twenty years

later, in fact, a writer in the "Critical Review" used the masculine

pronoun to refer to the author of "Betsy Thoughtless." It is quite

certain that Mrs. Haywood spent the closing years of her life in great

obscurity, for no notice of her death appeared in any one of the usual

magazines. She continued to publish until the end, and with two novels

ready for the press, died on 25 February, 1756.[33]

"In literature," writes M. Paul Morillot, "even if quality is wanting,

quantity has some significance," and though we may share Scott's

abhorrence for the whole "Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy tribe" of novels, we

cannot deny the authoress the distinction accorded her by the

"Biographia Dramatica" of being--for her time, at least--"the most

voluminous female writer this kingdom ever produced." Moreover, it is

not Richardson, the meticulous inventor of the epistolary novel, but the

past-mistress of sensational romance who is credited with originating

the English domestic novel. Compared with the delicate perceptions and

gentle humor of Fanny Burney and Jane Austen, Mrs. Haywood's best

volumes are doubtless dreary enough, but even if they only crudely

foreshadow the work of incomparably greater genius, they represent an

advance by no means slight. From "Love in Excess" to "Betsy Thoughtless"

was a step far more difficult than from the latter novel to "Evelina."

As pioneers, then, the author of "Betsy Thoughtless" and her obscurer

contemporaries did much to prepare the way for the notable women

novelists who succeeded them. No modern reader is likely to turn to the

"Ouida" of a bygone day--as Mr. Gosse calls her--for amusement or for

admonition, but the student of the period may find that Eliza Haywood's

seventy or more books throw an interesting sidelight upon public taste

and the state of prose fiction at a time when the half created novel was

still "pawing to get free his hinder parts."

FOOTNOTES

[1]

E. Bernbaum, _Mrs. Behn's Biography a Fiction_, PMLA, XXVIII, 432.

[2]

David Erskine Baker, _Companion to the Play House_, 1764.

[3]

The London Parish Registers contain no mention of an Eliza Fowler in

1693, but on 21 January, 1689, O.S., "Elizabeth dau. of Robert ffowler

[Transcriber's note: sic] & Elizabeth his wife" was christened at St.

Peter's, Cornhill. Later entries show that Robert was a hosier to his

trade. Possibly in suppressing the other particulars of her life, Mrs.

Haywood may have consigned to oblivion a year or two of her age, but in

her numerous writings I have not found any allusion that could lead to her

positive identification with the daughter of Robert Fowler.

[4]

He was the author of _An Examination of Dr. Clarke's Scripture-Doctrine

of the Trinity, with a Confutation of it_ (1719). The work is a

paragraph by paragraph refutation from the authority of scripture of the

_Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity_ (1712) by the metaphysical Dr.

Samuel Clarke, whose unorthodox views prevented Queen Caroline from

making him Archbishop of Canterbury. The Reverend Mr. Haywood was upon

safe ground in attacking a book already condemned in Convocation.

[5]

"Whereas Elizabeth Haywood, Wife of the Reverend Mr. Valentine Haywood,

eloped from him her Husband on Saturday the 26th of November last past,

and went away without his Knowledge and Consent: This is to give Notice

to all Persons in general, That if any one shall trust her either with

Money or Goods, or if she shall contract Debts of any kind whatsoever,

the said Mr. Haywood will not pay the same."

[6]

_Tatler_, No. 6 and No. 40.

[7]

W.R. Chetwood, _A General History of the Stage_, 56.

[8]

Genest, III, 59.

[9]

Genest, III, 73.

[10]

John Rich opened the New Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields during

December, 1714.

[11]

Genest, III, 113.

[12]

Genest, III, 241.

[13]

_Biographia Dramatica._ The production is mentioned by Genest, III, 281.

[14]

W.R. Chetwood, _A General History of the Stage_, 57.

[15]

Genest, III, 408.

[16]

In Kane O'Hara's later and more popular transformation of Tom Thumb into

a light opera, the song put into the mouth of the dying Grizzle by the

first adapters was retained with minor changes.

"My body's like a bankrupt's shop,

My creditor is cruel death,

Who puts to trade of life a stop,

And will be paid with this last breath; Oh!"

Apparently O'Hara made no further use of his predecessors.

[17]

S.P. Dom. George I, Bundle 22, No. 97.

[18]

In spite of the fact that "Translated from the French" appeared on the

title-page, Mrs. Haywood has hitherto been accredited with the full

authorship of these letters. They were really a loose translation of

_Lettres Nouvelles.... Avec Treize Lettres Amoureuses d'une Dame à un

Cavalier_ (Second Edition, Paris, 1699) by Edme Boursault, and were so

advertised in the public prints.

[19]

Probably a misprint. When the novels appeared, _Idalia_ was the

Unfortunate Mistress, _Lasselia_ the Self-abandon'd. Perhaps because the

work outgrew its original proportions, or because short novels found a

readier sale, the five were never published under the inclusive

cautionary caption.

[20]

E. Gosse, _Gossip in a Library_, 161, "What Ann Lang Read." Only one of

Mrs. Haywood's novels, _The City Jilt_, was ever issued in cheap form.

T. Bailey, the printer, evidently combined his printing business with

the selling of patent medicines.

[21]

The latter may be read in Savage's Poems, Cooke's edition, II, 162. The

complimentary verses first printed before the original issue.

[22]

His poem _To Mrs. Eliza Haywood on her Writings_ was hastily inserted in

the fourth volume of _Secret Histories, Novels, and Poems_ when that

collection had reached its third edition (1732). In the fourth edition

of ten years later it stands, with the verses already described, at the

beginning of Volume I.

[23]

In the Preface to _Lasselia_ (1723), for instance, she feels obliged to

defend herself from "that Aspersion which some of my own Sex have been

unkind enough to throw upon me, that I seem to endeavour to divert more

than to improve the Minds of my Readers. Now, as I take it, the Aim of

every Person, who pretends to write (tho' in the most insignificant and

ludicrous way) ought to tend at least to a good Moral Use; I shou'd be

sorry to have my Intentions judg'd to be the very reverse of what they

are in reality. How far I have been able to succeed in my Desires of

infusing those Cautions, too necessary to a Number, I will not pretend

to determine; but where I have had the Misfortune to fail, must impute

it either to the Obstinacy of those I wou'd persuade, or to my own

Deficiency in that very Thing which they are pleased to say I too much

abound in--a true description of Nature."

[24]

An eight page verse satire entitled _The Female Dunces. Inscribed to Mr.

Pope_ (1733) after criticizing the conduct of certain well known ladies,

concludes with praise of a nymph who we may believe was intended to

represent Eliza Haywood:

"Eliza good Examples shews in vain,

Despis'd, and laugh'd at by the _vicious Train_;

So bright she shines, she might adorn a Throne

Not with a _borrow'd_ Lustre, but her Own."

[25]

A single exception was _The Surprise_ (1724), dedicated to Steele in the

following words: "The little History I presume to offer, being composed

of Characters full of Honour and Generosity, I thought I had a fit

Opportunity, by presenting it to one who has made it so much his Study

to infuse those Principles, and whose every Action is a shining Example

of them, to express my Zeal in declaring myself with all imaginable

Regard," etc., etc.

[26]

See the Dedication to _The Fatal Secret_ (1724). "But as I am a Woman,

and consequently depriv'd of those Advantages of Education which the

other Sex enjoy, I cannot so far flatter my Desires, as to imagine it in

my Power to soar to any Subject higher than that which Nature is not

negligent to teach us.

"Love is a Topick which I believe few are ignorant of; there requires no

Aids of Learning, no general Conversation, no Application; a shady Grove

and purling Stream are all Things that's necessary to give us an Idea of

the tender Passion. This is a Theme, therefore, which, while I make

choice to write of, frees me from the Imputation of vain or

self-sufficient:--None can tax me with having too great an Opinion of my

own Genius, when I aim at nothing but what the meanest may perform. "I

have nothing to value myself on, but a tolerable Share of Discernment."

[27]

See the Preface to _The Injur'd Husband_ quoted in Chap. IV.

[28]

Preface to _The Memoirs of the Baron de Brosse_ (1725). A similar

complaint had appeared in the Dedication of _The Fair Captive_ (1721).

"For my own part ... I suffer'd all that Apprehension could inflict, and

found I wanted many more Arguments than the little Philosophy I am

Mistress of could furnish me with, to enable me to stem that Tide of

Raillery, which all of my Sex, unless they are very excellent indeed,

must expect, when once they exchange the Needle for the Quill."

[29]

See a poem by Aaron Hill, _To Eliza upon her design'd Voyage into Spain_

(undated), Hill's _Works_, III, 363. Also _The Husband_, 59. "On a trip

I was once taking to France, an accident happen'd to detain me for some

days at Dover," etc. Mrs. Haywood's relations with Hill have been

excellently discussed by Miss Dorothy Brewster, _Aaron Hill_ (1913),

186.

[30]

The first of these was a translation of the Chevalier de Mouhy's best

known work, _La Mouche, ou les Aventures et espiègleries facétieuses de

Bigand_, (1730), and may have been done by Mrs. Haywood herself. The

second title certainly savors of a typical Haywoodian production, but I

have been unable to find a copy of these alleged publications. Neither

of them was originally published at the Sign of Fame, and they could

hardly have been pirated, since Cogan, who issued the volume wherein the

advertisement appeared, was also the original publisher of

_The Busy-Body_. The _Anti-Pamela_ had already been advertised for

Huggonson in June, 1741, and had played a small part in the series of

pamphlets, novels, plays, and poems excited by Richardson's fashionable

history. If Mrs. Haywood wrote it, she was biting the hand that fed her,

for _The Virtuous Villager_ probably owed its second translation and

what little sale it may have enjoyed to the similarity between the

victorious virgin and the popular Pamela.

[31]

B.M. (MSS. Sloane. 4059. ff. 144), undated.

[32]

_Monthly Review_, II, 167, Jan. 1750.

[33]

The _Biographia Dramatica_ gives this date. Clara Reeve, _Progress of

Romance_, I, 121, however, gives 1758, while Mrs. Griffith, _Collection

of Novels_ (1777), II, 159, prefers 1759. The two novels were

_Clementina_ (1768), a revision of _The Agreeable Caledonian_, and _The

History of Leonora Meadowson_ (1788).

CHAPTER II

SHORT ROMANCES OF PASSION

The little amatory tales which formed Mrs. Haywood's chief stock in

trade when she first set up for a writer of fiction, inherited many of

the characteristics of the long-winded French romances. Though some were

told with as much directness as any of the intercalated narratives in

"Clélie" or "Cléopâtre," others permitted the inclusion of numerous

"little histories" only loosely connected with the main plot. Letters

burning with love or jealousy were inserted upon the slightest

provocation, and indeed remained an important component of Eliza

Haywood's writing, whether the ostensible form was romance, essay, or

novel. Scraps of poetry, too, were sometimes used to ornament her

earliest effusions, but the other miscellaneous features of the

romances--lists of maxims, oratory, moral discourses, and conversations

--were discarded from the first. The language of these short romances,

while generally more easy and often more colloquial than the absurd

extravagances of the translators of heroic romances and their imitators,

still smacked too frequently of shady groves and purling streams to be

natural. Many conventional themes of love or jealousy, together with

such stock types as the amorous Oriental potentate, the lover disguised

as a slave, the female page, the heroine of excessive delicacy, the

languishing beauty, the ravishing sea-captain, and the convenient pirate

persisted in the pages of Mrs. Barker, Mrs. Haywood, and Mrs. Aubin. As

in the interminable tomes of Scudéry, love and honor supplied the place

of life and manners in the tales of her female successors, and though in

some respects their stories were nearer the standard of real conduct,

new novel on the whole was but old romance writ small.

In attempting to revitalize the materials and methods of the romances

Mrs. Haywood was but following the lead of the French _romancières_, who

had successfully invaded the field of prose fiction when the passing of

the précieuse fashion and Boileau's influential ridicule[1] had

discredited the romance in the eyes of writers with classical

predilections. Mme de La Fayette far outshines her rivals, but a host of

obscure women, headed by Hortense Desjardins, better known as Mme de

Villedieu, hastened to supply the popular demand for romantic stories.

In drawing their subjects from the histories of more modern courts than

those of Rome, Greece, or Egypt they endeavored to make their

"historical" romances of passion more lifelike than the heroic romances,

and while they avoided the extravagances, they also shunned the

voluminousness of the _romans à longue haleine_. So the stories related

in "La Belle Assemblée" by Mme de Gomez, translated by Mrs. Haywood in

1725 and often reprinted, are nearer the model of Boccaccio's novelle

than of the Scudéry romance, both in their directness and in being set

in a framework, but the inclusion, in the framework, of long

conversations on love, morals, politics, or wit, with copious examples

from ancient and modern history, of elegant verses on despair and

similar topics, and of such miscellaneous matter as the "General

Instructions of a Mother to a Daughter for her Conduct in Life," showed

that the influence of the salon was not yet exhausted. In the

continuation called "L'Entretien des Beaux Esprits" (translated in

1734), however, the elaborate framework was so far reduced that fourteen

short tales were crowded into two volumes as compared with eighteen in

the four volumes of the previous work. Writers of fiction were evidently

finding brief, unadorned narrative most acceptable to the popular taste.

That the "novels" inserted in these productions had not ceased to

breathe the atmosphere of romance is sufficiently indicated by such

titles as "Nature outdone by Love," "The Triumph of Virtue," "The

Generous Corsair," "Love Victorious over Death," and "Heroick Love."

French models of this kind supplied Mrs. Haywood with a mine of romantic

plots and situations which she was not slow to utilize.[2] Furthermore,

her natural interest in emotional fiction was quickened by these and

other translations from the French. The "Letters from a Lady of Quality

to a Chevalier" emphasized the teaching of the "Lettres Portugaises,"

while "The Lady's Philosopher's Stone; or, The Caprices of Love and

Destiny" (1725),[3] although claiming to be an "historical novel" in

virtue of being set "in the time, when Cromwell's Faction prevail'd in

England," was almost entirely occupied with the matters indicated in the

sub-title. And in "The Disguis'd Prince: or, the Beautiful Parisian"

(1728) she translated the melting history of a prince who weds a

merchant's daughter in spite of complicated difficulties.[4] Much

reading in books of this sort filled Mrs. Haywood's mind with images of

exalted virtue and tremendous vice, and like a Female Quixote, she saw

and reported the life about her in terms borrowed from the romances. So,

too, Mrs. Manley had written her autobiography in the character of

Rivella.

This romantic turn of mind was not easily laid aside, but the women

writers made some progress toward a more direct and natural

representation of the passions. The advance was due partly, no doubt, to

a perception of the heroic absurdities of French fiction, but also to

the study of Italian _novelle_ and the "Exemplary Novels" of Cervantes.

But even when imitating the compression of these short tales Mrs.

Haywood did not always succeed in freeing herself from the "amour trop

delicat" of the romantic conventions. In two short "novels" appended to

"Cleomelia: or, the Generous Mistress" (1727) the robust animalism of

the Italian tales comes in sharp contrast with the _délicatesse_ of the

French tradition. "The Lucky Rape: or, Fate the best Disposer"

illustrates the spirit of the _novelle_.

Emilia, rusticated to Andalusia to escape falling in love, gives her

heart to Berinthus, whom she meets at a masquerade. On her way to a

second entertainment to meet her lover, her terror of a drunken cavalier

induces her to accept the protection of the amorous Alonzo and paves the

way for her ruin. Berinthus turns out to be her brother Henriquez.

Alonzo, his friend, marries the lady as soon as her identity is

discovered, and all parties are perfectly content.

Though the scene of "The Capricious Lover: or, No Trifling with a Woman"

is likewise laid in Spain, the atmosphere of the story is far different.

Montano, doubtful of Calista's affection for him, feigns to break with

her, and she, though really loving him, returns an indifferent answer

and marries Gaspero out of pique. The distracted lover thereupon falls

upon his sword in the presence of the newly wedded couple, and the

bride, touched by the spectacle of her lover's devotion, languishes and

dies in a few months.

There is little naturalness in the extravagant passion of the second

story, but until sensationalism cloyed the public palate, realism was an

unnecessary labor. By placing the events in some romantic country like

Spain, Portugal, Italy, or even France, any narrative of excessive love

could be made to pass current. The Latin countries were vaguely imagined

by romantic novelists as a sort of remote but actual _pays du Tendre_

where the most extraordinary actions might occur if only "love, soft

love" were the motivating force.

A collection of select novels called "Love in its Variety," advertised

in 1727 as "Written in Spanish by Signior Michel Ban Dello; made English

by Mrs. Eliza Haywood," was apparently a translation from the _novelle_

of Matteo Bandello, probably from a French version.[5] The best examples

of her brief, direct tales, however, are to be found in "The Fruitless

Enquiry. Being a Collection of several Entertaining Histories and

Occurrences, which Fell under the Observation of a Lady in her Search

after Happiness" (1727). Although the scene is laid in Venice, the model

of this framework story was probably not the "Decameron" but the

Oriental tales, known in England through French translations and

imitations of the "Arabian Nights." Intercalated stories were not

uncommon in French romances, but they were almost invariably introduced

as life histories of the various characters. A fantastic framework, with

a hint of magic, fabricated expressly to give unity to a series of

tales, half exemplary, half satirical, points directly to an ultimate

connection with the narratives of Scheherezade and Sutlememé. No attempt

to catch the spirit of the East is discernible, but the vogue of

Oriental tales was evidently beginning to make an impression on French

and English writers of fiction. Care for the moral welfare of her

readers doubtless influenced Mrs. Haywood to assert in the dedication to

Lady Elizabeth Germain that the following "Sheets ...contain the History

of some real Facts," and that the author's chief design in publishing

was to "persuade my Sex from seeking Happiness the wrong Way."

At any rate the moral of the stories suited the taste of the age.[6]

Miramillia, widow of a nobleman in Venice, loses her only son, and is

informed by a soothsayer that she will hear nothing of him until she has

a shirt made for him by a woman perfectly content. She, therefore, seeks

among her acquaintance for the happy woman, but one after another

reveals to her a secret disquiet.

Anziana, married against her will to the Count Caprera, encourages her

former lover, Lorenzo, to continue his friendship for her. Her husband

and father, believing that she is about to prove faithless to her

marriage vows, secretly assassinate Lorenzo, and cause his skeleton to

be set up in Anziana's closet for an object lesson. When she discovers

it, she refuses to be reconciled to her husband, and vows to spend an

hour a day weeping over Lorenzo's remains.

On the night of his marriage Montrano is torn from the arms of Iseria by

his cruel uncle and shipped to Ceylon. Shipwrecked, he becomes the slave

of a savage Incas, whose renegade Italian queen falls in love with him.

But neither her blandishments nor the terrible effects of her

displeasure can make him inconstant to Iseria. After suffering

incredible hardships, he returns to see Iseria once more before entering

a monastery, but she, loyal even to the semblance of the man, refuses to

allow him to leave her.

Stenoclea's doting parents refuse to let her wed Armuthi, a gentleman

beneath her in fortune, and he in hopes of removing the objection goes

on his travels. Her parents die, her brother is assassinated on his way

home to Venice, she becomes mistress of her fortune, and soon marries

her lover. Completely happy, she begins to make a shirt for Miramillia's

son, but before it is completed, a servant who had been wounded when her

brother was killed, returns and identifies Armuthi as the slayer.

Through Miramillia's influence the husband is pardoned, but Stenoclea

retires to a convent.

An adventuress named Maria boasts to Miramillia that she has attained

perfect felicity by entrapping the Marquis de Savilado into a marriage.

She too undertakes the shirt, but in a few days Miramillia hears that

the supposed Marquis has been exposed as an impostor and turned into the

street with his wife.

Violathia endures for a long time the cruelties of her jealous husband,

Count Berosi, but finally yields to the persistent kindness of her

lover, Charmillo. Just as he has succeeded in alienating his wife's

affections, Berosi experiences a change of heart. His conduct makes the

divorce impossible, and she is forced to remain the wife of a man she

loathes, and to dismiss Charmillo who has really gained her love.

Tellisinda, to avoid the reproach of barrenness, imposes an adopted boy

on her husband, but shortly afterward gives birth to a child. She is

forced to watch a spurious but amiable heir inherit the estate of her

own ill-natured son. (Cf. footnote 2 at end of this chapter.)

Even unmarried ladies, Miramillia finds, are not without their

discontents. Amalia is vexed over the failure of a ball gown. Clorilla

is outranked by an acquaintance whose father has obtained preferment.

Claribella pouts because a man has shot himself for love of her rival.

Selinda mourns her lap-dog dead.

Just as Miramillia is ready to give over her search for a happy woman,

Adario, her son, returns in company with a former lover of hers whose

daughter he has saved from a villain at the expense of a wound from

which he has but then recovered. Naturally the girl rewards him with her

hand, and all ends well.[7]

Of the stories in this diversified collection that of Anziana approaches

in kind, though not in degree, the tragic pathos of Isabella and the Pot

of Basil ("Decameron," IV, 5). The second narrative has all the glamor

of adventure in the barbaric East, and the romantic interest that

attaches to lovers separated but eternally constant. The histories of

Stenoclea and of Tellisinda contain situations of dramatic intensity.

But perhaps the story of Violathia is the most worthy of attention on

account both of its defects and of its merits. The weakest part of the

plot is the husband, who is jealous without cause, and equally without

reason suddenly reforms. But the character of Violathia is admirably

drawn. Unlike the usual heroine of Haywoodian fiction she is superior to

circumstance and does not yield her love to the most complacent adjacent

male. As a dutiful wife she resists for a long time the insinuations of

Charmillo, but when she decides to fly to her lover, her husband's tardy

change of heart cannot alter her feelings. Her character is individual,

firm, and palpable. If the story was original with Mrs. Haywood, it

shows that her powers of characterization were not slight when she

wished to exert them. The influence of the _novella_ and of the Oriental

tale produced nothing better.

From other literary forms the makers of fiction freely derived

sensational materials and technical hints. Without insisting too closely

upon the connection between novel and play, we may well remember that

nearly all the early novelists, Defoe excepted, were intimately

associated with the theatre. Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Haywood, and

later Fielding and Mrs. Lennox were successful in both fields. The women

writers especially were familiar with dramatic technique both as actors

and playwrights, and turned their stage training to account when they

wrote prose fiction. Mrs. Haywood's first novel, "Love in Excess"

(1720), showed evidences of her apprenticeship to the theatre. Its three

parts may be compared to the three acts of a play; the principal climax

falls properly at the end of the second part, and the whole ends in

stereotyped theatrical fashion with the marriage of all the surviving

couples. The handling of incident, too, is in the fashion of the stage.

Mrs. Haywood had sufficient skill to build up a dramatic situation, but

she invariably solves it, or rather fails to solve it, by an

interruption at the critical moment, so that the reader's interest is

continually titillated. Of a situation having in itself the germs of a

solution, she apparently had not the remotest conception. When a love

scene has been carried far enough, the coming of a servant, the sound of

a duel near by, or a seasonable outbreak of fire interrupts it. Such

devices were the common stock in trade of minor writers for the theatre.

Dramatic hacks who turned to prose fiction found it only a more

commodious vehicle for incidents and scenes already familiar to them on

the stage. In their hands the novel became simply a looser and more

extended series of sensational adventures. Accident, though tempered in

various degrees by jealousy, hatred, envy, or love, was the supreme

motivating force.

The characters of Mrs. Haywood's "Love in Excess" also inherited many

traits from the debased but glittering Sir Fopling Flutters, Mirabells,

Millamants, and Lady Wishforts of the Restoration stage. Of character

drawing, indeed, there is practically none in the entire piece; the

personages are distinguished only by the degree of their willingness to

yield to the tender passion. The story in all its intricacies may best

be described as the _vie amoureuse_ of Count D'Elmont, a hero with none

of the wit, but with all the gallantry of the rakes of late Restoration

comedy. Two parts of the novel relate the aristocratic intrigues of

D'Elmont and his friends; the third shows him, like Mrs. Centlivre's

gallants in the fifth act, reformed and a model of constancy. It would

be useless to detail the sensational extravagances of the plot in all

its ramifications, but the hero's adventures before and after marriage

may serve as a fair sample of the whole.

D'Elmont, returning to Paris from the French wars, becomes the

admiration of both sexes, but especially in the eyes of the rich and

noble Alovisa appears a conquest worthy of her powers. To an incoherent

expression of her passion sent to him in an anonymous letter he pays no

attention, having for diversion commenced an intrigue with the lovely

Amena. Though Alovisa in a second billet bids him aim at a higher mark,

"he had said too many fine things to be lost," and continues his pursuit

until Amena's father takes alarm and locks her up. Through her maid she

arranges for a secret meeting, and though touched by her father's

reproofs, she is unable to withstand the pleas of the captivating count.

Their tete-a-tete in the Tuilleries, however, is interrupted by

Alovisa's spies, who alarm the house with cries of fire, so that the

lovers find themselves locked out. Half senseless with dismay, Amena

finds shelter in the house of Alovisa, who, though inwardly triumphant,

receives her rival civilly and promises to reconcile her to her father.

D'Elmont is so patently glad to be relieved of his fair charge that she

demands back her letter, but he by mistake gives her one of Alovisa's,

whose handwriting she immediately recognizes. When the polite Count

returns to enquire after her health, she accuses her lover and friend of

duplicity, faints, and letting fall Alovisa's letter from her bosom,

brings about an _éclaircissement_ between D'Elmont and that lady. Before

Amena's recovery the Count hastens away to welcome his brother, and when

the imprudent girl has been safely lodged in a convent, D'Elmont, moved

more by ambition than by love, weds the languishing Alovisa.

After his marriage the Count soon quarrels with his wife and consoles

himself by falling in love with his ward, the matchless Melliora, but

the progress of his amour is interrupted by numerous unforeseen

accidents. The mere suspicion of his inconstancy raises his wife's

jealousy to a fever heat. To expose her rival she pretends to yield to

the persuasions of her wooer, the Baron D'Espernay, but as a result of a

very intricate intrigue both Alovisa and the Baron perish accidentally

on the swords of D'Elmont and his brother.

Melliora retires to a convent, and her lover goes to travel in Italy,

where his charms cause one lady to take poison for love of him, and

another to follow him disguised as the little foot-page Fidelio. In

helping Melliora's brother to elope with a beautiful Italian girl, the

Count again encounters his beloved Melliora, now pursued by the Marquis

de Sanguillier. In a dramatic _dénouement_ she deserts the Marquis at

the altar and throws herself upon the protection of her guardian. The

disappointed bridegroom is consoled by the discovery of an old flame who

has long been serving him secretly in the capacity of chambermaid.

Fidelio reveals her identity and dies of hopeless love, pitied by all.

The three surviving couples marry at once, and this time the husbands

"continue, with their fair Wives, great and lovely Examples of conjugal

Affection."

Such, with the omission of all secondary narratives, is the main plot of

Eliza Haywood's first novel.

"Love in Excess" best illustrates the similarity of sensational fiction

to clap-trap drama, but others of her early works bear traces of the

author's familiarity with the theatre. The escape of the pair of lovers

from an Oriental court, already the theme of countless plays including

Mrs. Haywood 's own "Pair Captive," was re-vamped to supply an episode

in "Idalia" (1723), and parts of the same novel are written in concealed

blank verse that echoes the heroic Orientalism of some of Dryden's

tragedies. In the character of Grubguard, the amorous alderman of "The

City Jilt" (1726), Mrs. Haywood apparently had in mind not Alderman

Barber, whom the character little resembles, but rather Antonio in

Otway's "Venice Preserved." And the plot of "The Distressed Orphan, or

Love in a Mad-House" (c. 1726), where young Colonel Marathon feigns

himself mad in order to get access to his beloved Annilia, may perhaps

owe its inspiration to the coarser mad-house scenes of Middleton's

"Changeling."[8] On the whole, however, the drama but poorly repaid its

debt to prose fiction.

An indication of the multifarious origins of the short tales of love is

to be found in the nominal diversity of the setting. The scene, though

often laid in some such passion-ridden land as Spain or Italy, rarely

affects the nature of the story. But as in such novels as "Philidore and

Placentia" and "The Agreeable Caledonian" the characters wander widely

over the face of Europe and even come in contact with strange Eastern

climes, so the writers of romantic tales ransacked the remotest corners

of literature and history for sensational matter. The much elaborated

chronicle of the Moors was made to eke out substance for "The Arragonian

Queen" (1724), a story of "Europe in the Eighth Century," while

"Cleomelia: or, the Generous Mistress" was advertised as the "Secret

History of a Lady Lately Arriv'd from Bengall." The tendency to exploit

the romantic features of outlandish localities was carried to the

ultimate degree by Mrs. Penelope Aubin, whose characters range over

Africa, Turkey, Persia, the East and West Indies, and the North American

continent, often with peculiar geographical results. But neither Mrs.

Aubin nor Mrs. Haywood was able to use the gorgeous local color that

distinguished Mrs. Behn's "Oroonoko," and still less did they command

the realistic imagination that could make the travels of a Captain

Singleton lifelike.

Even when, as in "The Mercenary Lover," the setting is transferred to

"the Metropolis of one of the finest Islands in the World," and the

action takes place "in the neighborhood of a celebrated Church, in the

Sound of whose Bells the Inhabitants of that populous City think it an

Honour to be born,"[9] the change is unaccompanied by any attempt at

circumstantial realism. We are told that Belinda of "The British

Recluse" is a young lady of Warwickshire, that Fantomina follows her

lover to Bath in the guise of a chambermaid, or that "The Fair Hebrew"

relates the "true, but secret history of two Jewish ladies who lately

resided in London," but without the labels the settings could not be

distinguished from the vague and unidentified _mise en scène_ of such a

romance as "The Unequal Conflict." Placentia in England raves of her

passion for Philidore exactly as Alovisa in Paris, Emanuella in

Madrid,[10] or Cleomelia in Bengal expose the raptures and agonies of

their passions. The hero of "The Double Marriage" (1726) rescues a

distressed damsel in the woods outside of Plymouth exactly as one of

Ariosto's or Spenser's knights-errant might have done in the fairy

country of old romance. In the sordid tale of "Irish Artifice," printed

in Curll's "Female Dunciad" (1728), no reader could distinguish in the

romantic names Aglaura and Merovius the nationality or the meanness of a

villainous Irish housekeeper and her son. And though the tale is the

very reverse of romantic, it contains no hint of actual circumstance.

The characters in Mrs. Haywood's early fiction move in an imaginary

world, sometimes, it is true, marked with the names of real places, but

no more truly realistic than the setting of "Arcadia" or "Parthenissa."

Nor are the figures that people the eighteenth century paradise of

romance more definitely pictured than the landscape. They are generally

unindividualized, lay figures swayed by the passions of the moment, or

at best mere "humour" characters representing love's epitome,

extravagant jealousy, or eternal constancy. Pope could make a portrait

specific by the vigorous use of epigrams, but Mrs. Haywood's comments on

her heroes and heroines are but feeble. The description of Lasselia, for

instance, contains no trait that is particular, no characteristic

definitely individual. The girl is simply the type of all that is

conventionally charming in her sex, "splendidly null, dead perfection."

"But if the grave Part of the World were charm'd with her Wit and

Discretion, the Young and Gay were infinitely more so with her Beauty;

which tho' it was not of that dazzling kind which strikes the Eye at

first looking on it with Desire and Wonder, yet it was such as seldom

fail'd of captivating Hearts most averse to Love. Her features were

perfectly regular, her Eyes had an uncommon Vivacity in them, mix'd

with a Sweetness, which spoke the Temper of her Soul; her Mien was

gracefully easy, and her Shape the most exquisite that could be; in

fine, her Charms encreas'd by being often seen, every View discover'd

something new to be admir'd; and tho' they were of that sort which

more properly may be said to persuade than to command Adoration, yet

they persuaded it in such a manner, that no Mortal was able to resist

their Force." (p. 2.)

Mrs. Haywood's heroes are merely the masculine counterparts of her

women. Bellcour, the type of many more, "had as much Learning as was

necessary to a Gentleman who depended not on that alone to raise his

Fortune: He had also admirable Skill in Fencing, and became a Horse as

well as any Man in the World."[11] Victor over a thousand hearts, the

Haywoodian male ranges through his glittering sphere, ever ready to fall

in or out of love as the occasion demands. D'Elmont of "Love in Excess"

possesses a soul large enough to contain both love and fury at almost

the same moment. A "brulée" with his spouse merely increases his

tenderness for his ward.

"You have done well, Madam, (said D'Elmont, looking on her with Eyes

sparkling with Indignation) you have done well, by your impertinent

Curiosity and Imprudence, to rouze me from my Dream of Happiness, and

remind me that I am that wretched thing a Husband! 'Tis well indeed,

answer'd Alovisa, (who saw now that there was no need of farther

Dissimulation) that any thing can make you remember, both what you

are, and what I am. You, resum'd he, hastily interrupting her, have

taken an effectual Method to prove your self a Wife!--a very Wife!--

Insolent--Jealous--and Censorious!--But Madam, continued he frowning,

since you are pleased to assert your Privilege, be assur'd, I too

shall take my turn, and will exert the--Husband! In saying this, he

flung out of the Room in spite of her Endeavours to hinder him, and

going hastily through a Gallery which had a large Window that look'd

into the Garden, he perceiv'd Melliora lying on a green Bank, in a

melancholy but a charming Posture, directly opposite to the place

where he was; her Beauties appear'd, if possible more to advantage

than ever he had seen them, or at least he had more opportunity thus

unseen by her, to gaze upon them: he in a moment lost all the Rage of

Temper he had been in, and his whole Soul was taken up with

Softness.... Ambition, Envy, Hate, Fear, or Anger, every other Passion

that finds entrance in the Soul, Art and Discretion may disguise; but

Love, tho' it may be feign'd, can never be conceal'd, not only the

Eyes (those true and most perfect Intelligencers of the Heart) but

every Feature, every Faculty betrays it! It fills the whole Air of the

Person possess'd of it; it wanders round the Mouth! plays in the

Voice! trembles in the Accent! and shows itself a thousand different

ways! even Melliora's care to hide it, made it more apparent; and the

transported D'Elmont, not considering where he was, or who might be a

witness of his Rapture, could not forbear catching her in his Arms,

and grasping her with an extasy, which plainly told her what his

thoughts were, tho' at that time he had not power to put 'em into

words; and indeed there is no greater Proof of a vast and elegant

Passion, than the being uncapable of expressing it." (p. 79.)

Oddly enough the early experimenters in fiction never perceived that to

seem real a passion must be felt by a real person. They attempted again

and again to heighten the picture of envy, fear, ambition, rage, or love

by all manner of extraordinary circumstances, but they rarely succeeded

in attaching the emotion to a lifelike character. It was indeed passion,

but passion painted on the void, impalpable. Consequently they almost

never succeeded in maintaining complete verisimilitude, nor was their

character drawing any less shadowy than in the sentimental romances of

Sidney and Lodge. Compare, for example, the first expression of

Rosalynde's love with the internal debate of Mrs. Haywood's

Placentia.[12] Both are cast in soliloquy form, and except that the

eighteenth century romancer makes no attempt to decorate the style with

fantastic conceits, the two descriptions are not essentially different.

"[Placentia] was no sooner at liberty to reflect, than she grew amazed

at herself for having expresd, and still feeling so uncommon a Concern

for the Service she had received from Jacobin [Philidore]; he did no

more, said she, than was his Duty, nay, any Man would have done as much

for a Woman to whom he had not the least obligation, if distressed and

assaulted in the manner she had been--why then, continued she, does the

action appear so charming, so meritorious from him?--'Tis certainly the

surprize to find so much gallantry and courage in a Man of his mean

birth, that has caused this disorder in my Soul--were he my Equal I

should think it was Love had seized me, but Oh! far be it from me to

debase myself so far--Yet, again would she retort, what can I wish in

Man that is not to be found in this too lovely Slave?... Besides, who

knows but that his Descent may be otherwise than he pretends--I have

heard of Princes who have wandered in strange disguises--he may be in

reality as far above me as he seems beneath.... The thought that there

was a possibility for such a thing to be, had no sooner entered into her

head than she indulged it with an infinity of rapture, she painted him

in Imagination the most desperate dying Lover that ever was, represented

the transports she shou'd be in when the blest discovery shou'd be made,

held long discourses with him, and formed answers such as she supposed

he wou'd make on such an occasion. Thus, for some hours did she beguile

her Cares, but Love, who takes delight sometimes to torment his Votarys

wou'd not long permit her to enjoy this satisfaction.... Reason, with

stern remonstrances checked the Romantick turn of her late thoughts, and

showed her the improbability of the hope she had entertained: Were he,

cryed she, with an agony proportioned to her former transports, of any

degree which you'd encourage his pretensions to my Love, he cou'd not

for so long a Time have endured the servile Offices to which he has been

put--Some way his ingenious passion wou'd have found out to have

revealed itself--No, no, he is neither a Lover nor a Gentleman, and I

but raise Chimera's to distract myself ...but Ill [_sic_] retrieve all

yet, Ill discharge him from my house and service--he is an Enchanter,

and has bewitched me from my Reason, and never, never more shall he

behold my face."

The normal character in Eliza Haywood's tales almost invariably

conformed to some conventional type borrowed from the romance or the

stage. The author's purpose was not to paint a living portrait, but to

create a vehicle for the expression of vivid emotion, and in her design

she was undoubtedly successful until the reading public was educated to

demand better things.

On [Transcriber's note: sic] exception, however, to the customary

conventionality of Mrs. Haywood's heroines ought to be noted. Ordinarily

the novelist accepted the usual conception of man the pursuer and woman

the victim, but sometimes instead of letting lovely woman reap the

consequences of her folly after the fashion of Goldsmith's celebrated

lyric, she violated romantic tradition by making her disappointed

heroines retire into self-sufficient solitude, defying society. In real

life the author of these stories was even more uncompromising. Far from

pining in obscurity after her elopement from her husband, she continued

to exist in the broad light of day, gaining an independent living by the

almost unheard of occupation (as far as women were concerned) of

writing. If she was blighted, she gave no indication of the fact.

Something of the same defiant spirit actuated the unfortunate Belinda

and Cleomira of "The British Recluse" (1722).

Belinda, a young lady of fortune in Warwickshire, comes to London on

business and meets at her lodging-house a mysterious fair recluse.

Imagining that their lots may be somewhat akin, she induces the retired

beauty to relate the history of her misfortunes.

Cleomira upon her father's death is removed from the court to the

country by a prudent mother. She does not take kindly to housewifery,

and languishes until friends persuade her mother to let her attend a

ball. There she meets the glorious Lysander, and in spite of her

mother's care, runs away to join him in London. Her ruin and desertion

inevitably follow. The sight of a rival in her place makes her

frantically resolve to die by poison, but the apothecary gives her only

a harmless opiate. Thinking herself dying, she sends a last letter to

her faithless lover. When she awakes and hears how indifferently he has

received the report of her death, she at length overcomes her unhappy

passion, and retires from the world.

Belinda then relates how her marriage with the deserving Worthly was

postponed by her father's death. In the interim the captivating Sir

Thomas Courtal has occasion to render her a slight service at the

overturn of her coach, and fires her with a passion which her mild

esteem for Worthly is too weak to overcome. Courtal perceives and

encourages her fondness, though he poses as Worthly's friend. She gives

him an assignation in a wood, where she is saved from becoming a victim

to his lust only by the timely arrival of her true admirer. In the duel

that ensues Worthly falls, Courtal flees, and a little later Belinda

goes to London in hopes of seeing him. At the playhouse she is only too

successful in beholding him in a box accompanied by his wife and

mistress. From the gossip of her friends she learns that his real name

is Lord----, and from one of the ladies she hears such stories of his

villainy that she can no longer doubt him to be a monster.

Worthly, meanwhile, has recovered from his wound and weds Belinda's

sister. Lysander and Courtal prove to be in reality the same bland

villain, the inconstant Bellamy. His two victims, sympathizing in their

common misfortune, agree to retire together to a remote spot where they

can avoid all intercourse with the race of men. "And where a solitary

Life is the effect of Choice, it certainly yields more solid Comfort,

than all the publick Diversions which those who are the greatest

Pursuers of them can find."

The same admirable sentiment was shared by the surviving heroine of "The

Double Marriage: or, the Fatal Release" (1726), who after witnessing a

signal demonstration of the perfidy of man, resolves to shun for ever

the false sex.

Dazzled by the numerous accomplishments of Bellcour, the charming

Alathia weds him in secret. When he finds that his father has designed

to bestow his hand upon the heiress of an India merchant, he dares not

confess his fault, but lets himself be carried to Plymouth to meet his

intended bride. There he determines to escape from his father during a

hunting party, but while passing a wood, he hears cries and rescues a

fair maiden from violation. The beautiful stranger allows him to conduct

her back to Plymouth, and turns out to be Mirtamene, the woman he is to

marry. Though very much in love with this new beauty, Bellcour cannot

relinquish the thought of Alathia without a struggle. But in fatal

hesitation the time slips by, and he is finally compelled to wed a

second bride. Meanwhile the deserted Alathia hears disquieting reports

of her husband's conduct. In disguise as a boy she travels to Plymouth

to see for herself, confronts her guilty partner, and after hearing his

confession, stabs herself. Overcome by remorse and love, Bellcour

imitates her, while Mirtamene "warn'd by the example of Bellcour, that

Interest, Absence, or a new Passion, can make the most seeming constant

Lover false, took a Resolution ever to contemn and hate that betraying

Sex to which she owed her Misfortune and the Sight of such a Disaster as

she had beheld in Alathia."

Not content to retire in disgust from the world, Glicera, the victim of

fickle man in "The City Jilt" (1726) determines to retaliate upon the

lover who has ruined and abandoned her when the death of her father left

her without a fortune or a protector. To secure her revenge she

encourages the advances of a senile alderman, Grubguard by name, whom

she takes infinite delight in deceiving by the help of an ingenious

confidant. Meanwhile an unfortunate lawsuit and the extravagances of his

wife have ruined the false Melladore, who is obliged to mortgage his

estate to Grubguard. Glicera obtains the deeds from the amorous

alderman, and then sends him packing. Melladore is forced to beg of her

sufficient funds to purchase a commission and later dies in battle. With

the fortune she has won from her various lovers Glicera retires from the

world and henceforth shuns the society of men.

In these three tales Mrs. Haywood followed the guidance of her own

experience when it ran counter to the traditions of romance. The

betrayed heroine ought to have died, or at least to have been immured in

a convent to suffer a living death, but instead of acquiescing in their

fate, Belinda and Cleomira, Mirtamene, and Glicera defy the world, and

in the last case prove that the worm may turn.

Among the works of her first decade of authorship a few effusions in

which Mrs. Haywood has succeeded to a degree in motivating,

characterizing, or analyzing the passions of her characters, must be

exempted from the general charge of commonplaceness. The first of these

is "Idalia: or, the Unfortunate Mistress" (1724), the story of a young

Venetian beauty--like Lasselia, her charms can only be imagined not

described--whose varied amorous adventures carry her over most of Italy.

She is sought by countless suitors, among them the base Florez, whom her

father promptly forbids the house. Idalia's vanity is piqued at the loss

of a single adorer, and more from perverseness than from love she

continues to correspond with him. He makes no further use of her

condescension than to boast of her favors, until at the command of his

patron, Don Ferdinand, he induces Idalia to make an assignation with

him. Ferdinand meets her and not without difficulty at length effects

her ruin. Her lover's friend, Henriquez, in conducting her to a place of

safety in Padua, becomes himself the victim of her charms, quarrels with

Ferdinand, and slays him and is slain. Henriquez' brother, Myrtano, next

succeeds as Idalia's adorer, but learning that he is about to make an

advantageous marriage, she secretly decamps. In her flight the very

guide turns out to be a noble lover in disguise. When she escapes from

him in a ship bound for Naples, the sea-captain pays her crude court,

but just in time to save her from his embraces the ship is captured by

Barbary corsairs--commanded by a young married couple. Though the

heroine is in peasant dress, she is treated with distinction by her

captors. Her history moves them to tears, and they in turn are in the

midst of relating to her the involved story of their courtship, when the

vessel is wrecked by a gale. Borne ashore on a plank, Idalia is succored

by cottagers, and continues her journey in man's clothes. She is loved

by a lady, and by the lady's husband, who turns out to be her dear

Myrtano. Their felicity is interrupted by the jealousy of Myrtano's

wife, who appeals to the Pope and forces the lovers to separate by his

order. Idalia leads a miserable life, persecuted by all the young

gallants of Rome. One day she sees Florez, the first cause of all her

misfortunes, pass the window, and with thoughts bent on revenge sends

him a billet, which he carries to his master. Myrtano keeps the

appointment, muffled in a cloak, and Idalia stabs him by mistake.

Overcome by remorse, she dies by the same knife.

The motivation of the heroine at the beginning of the story, as Miss

Morgan has pointed out,[13]is more elaborate than usual in Haywoodian

romance. To show a young girl's vanity teasing her into an intrigue

required a more delicate appreciation of the passions than the stock

situations in love stories afforded. Obliged to draw upon her own

resources, Mrs. Haywood handled the incidents with a niceness that could

hardly have been expected from the author of "Love in Excess." Her sense

for _vraisemblance_ protected her from many absurdities, though not from

all. For instance, when Idalia to preserve herself from the

importunities of Ferdinand employs the same threat of stabbing herself

that Clarissa Harlowe in similar circumstances holds over Lovelace, the

Italian heroine very naturally tries first to stab her seducer. But

realism vanishes when Idalia begins her romantic flight from place to

place and from lover to lover. The incidents of romance crowd fast

around her. When in man's clothes she is loved by a woman who takes her

for what she seems, and by the woman's husband who knows her for what

she is, the reader cannot help recalling a similar Gordian love-knot in

Sidney's "Arcadia." Perhaps the only convincing detail in the latter

part of the book is the heroine's miserable end. But although the

sentiments of the characters are reported in concealed blank verse that

smacks of theatrical rant, though the absurd Oriental digressions, the

disguises, the frequent poisonings, and fortunate accidents all detract

from the naturalness and plausibility of the tale, yet one cannot deny

the piece occasional merits, which if smothered in extravagances, are

hopeful signs of a coming change. The very excess of strained and

unnatural incidents indicates that the popular palate was becoming

cloyed; for a time the writers of fiction attempted to stimulate it by

spicing the dish, but when the limit of mordancy was reached, a new diet

became imperative.

Though in no sense a soothing draught for the overstrained sensibilities

of romance readers, "The Fatal Secret: or, Constancy in Distress" (1724)

nevertheless represents a valuable part of Mrs. Haywood's contribution

to the technique of the novel. Few of her works indicate more clearly

her power to display the operations of passion dominating a young and

innocent heart.

When the story opens, Anadea is a heart-free maid of sixteen, better

educated than most young girls, and chiefly interested in her studies.

Fearing to leave her unprovided for, her father urges her to marry, and

she, though inclined to a single life, returns a dutiful answer, begging

him to direct her choice. He fixes upon the worthy Chevalier de Semar,

and bids her prepare for the wedding.

"The Time which the necessary Preparations took up, Anadea pass'd in

modelling her Soul, as much as possible, to be pleas'd with the State

for which she was intended.--The Chevalier had many good Qualities,

and she endeavoured to add to them in Imagination a thousand more.

Never did any Woman take greater Pains to resist the Dictates of

Desire, than she did to create them ...yet she had it not in her

Power to feel any of those soft Emotions, those Impatiencies for his

Absence, those tender Thrillings in his Presence, nor any of those

agreeable Perplexities which are the unfailing Consequences of Love

...and she began, at length, to lay the Blame on her own want of

Sensibility, and to imagine she had not a Heart fram'd like those of

other Women."

At the house of a friend Anadea meets the Count de Blessure and feels

the starts of hitherto unsuspected passion. Beside this new lover the

Chevalier appears as nought. Her mind is racked by an alternation of

hope and despair.

"In Anxieties, such as hopeless Lovers feel, did the discontented

Anadea pass the Night:--She could not avoid wishing, though there was

not the least Room for her to imagine a Possibility of what she

wish'd:--She could not help praying, yet thought those Prayers a Sin.

--Her once calm and peaceful Bosom was now all Hurry and Confusion:--

The Esteem which she had been long labouring to feel for the

Chevalier, was now turn'd to Aversion and Disdain; and the

Indifference she had for all Mankind, now converted into the most

violent Passion for one ...she thought she could be contended to

live a single Life, and knew so little of the encroaching Nature of

the Passion she had entertained, that she believed she should never

languish for any greater Joy, than that she might, without a Crime,

indulge Contemplation with the Idea of his Perfections; and to destroy

that pleasing Theory by marrying with another ...was more terrible to

her than the worst of Deaths.--Confounded what to do, or rather wild

that there was nothing she could do that might be of Service to her in

an Exigence like this, her Mind grew all a Chaos, and the

unintermitting Inquietudes of her Soul not permitting any Repose, she

...had a very good Pretence to keep her Chamber, and receive no

Visits."

She passes the day in tormenting perplexities, sometimes relieved by

intervals of unsubstantial joy, when she fancies that her affianced may

break off the match for some reason, that his sickness, an accident, or

death may leave her free to wed Blessure. In imagination she pictures to

herself happy meetings with her lover, and even repeats their

conversation. Then recollecting her true situation, she lapses into real

woe and bitterness of heart. The Count, however, has been deeply

affected by her charms, and though he learns that she is engaged to De

Semar, he sends her an appealing letter to discover whether the match is

the result of choice or duty. Upon the receipt of this billet the soul

of Anadea is distracted between the impulses of love and the dictates of

prudence. Finally she writes a discreet, but not too severe reply,

intimating that her choice is due more to duty than to inclination.

Naturally the Count protests vehemently against her sacrificing herself

to a man for whom she cares nothing, vows that the day of her wedding

with De Semar shall be his last upon earth, and entreats a meeting.

"What now became of the enamour'd Anadea? How was it possible for a

Heart so prepossessed as hers, to hold out in a Reserve which was very

near breaking the Strings which held it--... Yet still the

Consequences that might attend this Meeting, for a Time repelled the

Dictates of her Passion.--But it was no more than a faint Struggle;

Love! all-conquering, all-o'er-powering Love! triumphed over every

other Consideration! and she consented to his and her own impatient

Wishes."

Under the pretence of a change of air she goes to a friend's house at

Versailles, where Blessure secretly weds her. After a short period of

felicity, they are betrayed by an officious maid. Blessure kills the

Chevalier, but is himself wounded and cast into prison. His father

secures a pardon by promising the king's mistress that the Count shall

marry her daughter, but Blessure remains constant to Anadea, though

keeping his marriage a secret for fear of infuriating his father. He is

sent away by his displeased parent to learn the virtue of obedience,

while Anadea retires to St. Cloud to await her husband's return. There

the story ends in an unexpected tragedy of incest and blood.

The back-stairs intrigues and the sensational horrors which to the

majority of Mrs. Haywood's readers doubtless seemed the chief attraction

of the story are not different from the melodramatic features of

countless other amatory tales, French and English. But when for a dozen

pages the author seeks to discover and explain the motives of her

characters both by impersonal comment and by the self-revelation of

letters, she is making a noteworthy step--even if an unconscious one--

toward the Richardsonian method of laying bare the inner natures of

ordinary people. She has here pursued the analysis of character as an

end in itself, for in "The Fatal Secret" there is no hint of disguised

scandal, nor any appeal to the pruriency of degenerate readers.

Sensational in the extreme the story is, but nevertheless the progress

of the narrative is delayed while the sentiments of the heroine are

examined in the minutest detail. While better known romancers exploited

chiefly the strange and surprising adventures (other than amorous) of

their characters, or used the _voyage imaginaire_ for the purposes of

satire, Eliza Haywood and her female colleagues stimulated the popular

taste for romances of the heart. In trying to depict the working of

intense human passions they rendered a distinct service to the

development of English fiction.

The story of "The Mercenary Lover" (1726) involved, besides the ability

to body forth emotion, considerable power to show a gradual degradation

in the character of one of the heroines.

The avaricious Clitander gains the moiety of a fortune by marrying the

young, gay Miranda, but cannot rest without securing to himself the

portion of the elder sister as well. Althea's thoughtful and less

volatile nature has hitherto resisted the assaults of love, but her

insidious brother-in-law undermines her virtue by giving her wanton

books and tempting her with soft speeches until she yields to his

wishes. When he attempts to make her sign a deed of gift instead of a

will to provide for their child, she discovers his treachery and flees

to the country. By playing upon her tenderness he coaxes her back and

poisons her. Miranda is fully informed of her husband's villainy, but

contents herself with removing from the house. Thus Clitander loses not

only his sister-in-law's, but his wife's fortune as well, and is

completely unmanned by remorse and apprehension.

The contrast between the characters of the gay and thoughtless wife and

the pensive, pure-minded girl is skilfully managed, and the various

steps in the downward course of Althea's nature are exhibited in detail.

Like Anadea in "The Fatal Secret" she retires to her chamber not to

sleep, but to indulge in the freedom of her thoughts, which are poured

forth at length to let the reader into the secrets of her passion-ridden

bosom. To reveal character in action was beyond the limit of Eliza

Haywood's technique; and once the story is well under way, Althea

becomes as colorless as only a heroine of romance can be. But the

author's effort to differentiate the female characters before the action

begins, and to make a portion of the plot turn upon a psychological

change in one of them shows that even sensation-loving readers were

demanding a stricter veracity of treatment than had hitherto been

necessary.

But perhaps the most careful interlocking of character and event to be

found among these embryo novels is contained in "The Life of Madam De

Villesache. Written by a Lady, who was an Eye-witness of the greatest

part of her Adventures, and faithfully Translated from her French

Manuscript. By Mrs. Eliza Haywood" (1727). Since no original source for

this story has come to light, we may probably assume that the French

manuscript was a complete fabrication on the part of the English author.

At any rate, the tale was one of passion and intrigue such as she

delighted to compose.

Henrietta, daughter of a certain Duke, grows up in obscure circumstances

to be a miracle of beauty. When her father comes to carry her to court,

her rustic lover, Clermont, pleads so effectually that she consents to a

secret union with him. In the glare of the court she half forgets her

country husband until too fatally reminded of him by being sought in

marriage by the Marquis of Ab----lle. Her attempts at evasion are vain,

and rather than face her father's anger, she permits herself to be

married a second time. She has not long enjoyed her new rank when

Clermont, whom she has informed of her step, appears to reproach her and

to claim his rights. Still irresolute, she persuades him by tears and

prayers not to expose her perfidy, and secretly admits him to a

husband's privileges. In due time the pair are caught by the Marquis,

and to avoid his rage confess their prior marriage. Clermont is thrown

into prison, where he dies not without suspicion of poison. Henrietta

retires to convent, but the Duke, her father, in order to gain the

Marquis's estate for her unborn infant, manages to stifle the evidence

of her first marriage. Enraged that he cannot obtain a divorce, the

Marquis resolves to be revenged upon his perjured wife. He intercepts

her coach in a wood outside of Paris and brutally murders her. The Duke

orders her magnificently buried. Although nothing against the Marquis

can be proved, he is not allowed to escape the vengeance of heaven, but

goes mad and in a lucid interval just before death confesses his crimes.

The weakness and irresolution of the heroine are made the pivot of each

turning point in the plot. When she yields to her lover's entreaties to

consummate a hasty marriage; when fear of her father's displeasure

induces her to keep their union a secret; when her love of luxurious

grandeur at court persuades her to contract a more exalted match; when

her terror of Clermont forces her into a shameless expedient for the

sake of mollifying his anger; and when after her exposure by her

husband, the Marquis, she brazens out her trial in hopes of maintaining

the splendor of her rank and fortune, she is welding link by link the

chain of circumstance that draws her to ultimate disaster. She is by no

means a simple heroine motivated by the elementary passions; instead she

is constantly swayed by emotions and desires of the most diverse and

complex nature. After her first taste of court life she learns to look

back on her husband's rusticity with a sort of contempt, and to regret

her precipitate action.

"Not that she hated Clermont; on the contrary, she had yet very great

Remains of her former Passion for him, whenever she reflected on the

Endearments which had past between them: but then she depis'd the

Meanness of his Extraction, and the Thoughts that she had put him in

possession of a Title, which gave him the Power, whenever he pleas'd

to exert it, of calling her from the present Grandeur of her State,

and obliging her to live with him in a mean Retirement; made all

Desires instigated by her Affection, immediately give way to that new

Idol of her Wishes, Greatness! And she more ardently endeavour'd to

find some Stratagem to prevent him from ever seeing her again, than

she had formerly pray'd in the Simplicity and Innocence of her

Affections, never to be separated from him." (p. 14).

When an ambitious marriage is proposed, her first horror at the thought

of deserting her country husband yields to a sort of resignation when

she persuades herself of the necessity of the step. And when she

considers the riches, title, and agreeable person of the Marquis, she

almost disdains herself for hesitating to prefer him to Clermont. Her

life is the tragedy of a soul too indolent to swim against the current

of events. Mrs. Haywood managed to give extraordinary vividness and

consistency to the character of the vacillating Henrietta by making the

plot depend almost entirely upon the indecision of the heroine.

Consequently none of the author's women are as sharply defined as this

weak, pleasure-loving French girl. The character drawing, though too

much subordinated to the sensational elements in the story, is

nevertheless distinct and true to life.

Most probably, however, the few attempts at analysis of character or

interrelation of character and plot were of little concern both to the

author of emotional fiction and to her readers. The romancer's purpose

was not to reveal an accurate picture of life and manners, but to thrill

the susceptible bosom by scenes of tender love, amorous rapture, or

desperate revenge. The department of sensationalism especially exploited

by women writers and generally allowed to be most suited to their genius

is sufficiently indicated by the words typographically emphasized on the

title-page of one of Mrs. Haywood's few essays. "Reflections on the

Various Effects of LOVE, According to the contrary Dispositions of the

Persons on whom it operates. Illustrated with a great many Examples of

the good and bad Consequences of that PASSION. Collected from the best

Ancient and Modern HISTORIES. Intermix'd with the latest AMOURS and

INTRIGUES of Persons of the First Rank of both Sexes, of a certain

Island adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia. Written by the Author of The

Mercenary Lover, and the Memoirs of the said Island. Love is not sin,

but where 'tis sinful Love. Never before made Publick." To any

contemporary connoisseur of hectic literature such a feast of Love,

Passion, Histories, Amours, and Intrigues as this, offered in the shop

of N. Dobb in the Strand for the small price of one shilling, must have

been irresistible. No less moving was the appeal of Eliza's fiction to

such Biddy Tipkins and Polly Honeycombes as delighted in a tale of

amorous adventure, particularly if it was set in the glittering

atmosphere of the court. A typical story of intrigues among the great is

"Lasselia: or, the Self-Abandoned" (1723).

The heroine, niece of Madame de Montespan, finding herself in danger of

becoming her aunt's rival in the affections of Louis XIV, goes secretly

into the country to visit her friends M. and Mme Valier, where she falls

in love with De L'Amye, a married gentleman. Summoned back to court by

the amorous monarch, Lasselia chooses rather to flee from the protection

of her friends in the disguise of a pilgrim, and led by lucky chance

casts herself on the protection of her lover, who conveys her to a

country inn and there maintains her for some time to their mutual

felicity. Mile Douxmourie, once affianced to De L'Amye but jilted by

him, accidentally discovers the pair and immediately communicates with

the gallant's wife, who with the Valiers soon appears to reclaim the

recreants. The wife rages at her husband, he at the perfidious

Douxmourie, while Lasselia offers to stab herself. By the good offices

of her friends, however, the girl is persuaded to enter a nunnery where

she becomes a pattern of piety. De L'Amye is reconciled to his wife.

In the first few pages of the story the author makes a noteworthy

attempt to create an atmosphere of impending disaster. When De L'Amye

first meets the heroine, three drops of blood fall from his nose and

stain the white handkerchief in her hand, and the company rallies him on

this sign of an approaching union, much to his wife's discomfiture. The

accident and her yet unrecognized love fill Lasselia's mind with uneasy

forebodings. "She wou'd start like one in a Frenzy, and cry out, Oh! it

was not for nothing that those ominous Drops of Blood fell from him on

my Handkerchief!--It was not for nothing I was seiz'd with such an

unusual Horror--Nor is it in vain, that my Soul shrinks, and seems to

dread a second Interview!--They are all, I fear, too sure Predictions of

some fatal Consequence." These gloomy thoughts at length give way to an

ecstasy of despairing love, and when her affection is reciprocated, to a

series of passionate letters and poems, which indeed make necessary the

author's apology for the "too great Warmth" of the style.

Since the ultimate disaster of adventurous heroines was regarded as a

sop to moral readers, Mrs. Haywood frequently failed to gratify her

audience with a happy ending, but occasionally a departure from strict

virtue might be condoned, provided it took place in a country far

removed from England. The scene of "The Padlock: or, No Guard without

Virtue"[14] was appropriately laid in Spain.

Don Lepidio of Seville, by his jealous conduct, completely alienates the

affections of his young and beautiful wife, Violante. She finally writes

a reply to the earnest entreaties of an unknown lover, and though filled

with apprehension at seeing her letter carried off by an ugly black

slave, agrees to meet him. Don Honorius, for it was he who had assumed

the disguise of the slave, proves to be the wonder of his sex. He

persuades her to elope to the house of one of his relations, and after

Lepidio has secured a divorce, marries her with great felicity.

That novels of intrigue, even without the tinsel of court dress and the

romance of French or Spanish setting, were acceptable to Eliza Haywood's

public is shown by the two parts of "The Masqueraders: or, Fatal

Curiosity" (1724-5), which in the most luscious language of passion

narrate the philanderings of a "charming Rover" called Dorimenus, "whose

real Name, for some Reasons, I shall conceal." London masquerades, as

the title indicates, play a large part in the plot. A more sprightly

tale, though still of the unedifying sort, is "Fantomina: or, Love in a

Maze. Being the Secret History of an Amour between two Persons of

Condition." The story is so fantastic that it can hardly be suspected of

having any connection with an actual occurrence, but the novelist was

not unaware of the advertising value of hinted scandal.

A young lady of distinguished birth, beauty, wit, and spirit for a

frolic goes masked to the theatre, and there falling in love with the

agreeable Beauplaisir, begins an intrigue with him. When his ardor

cools, she lures him on again under a different disguise, and thus

manages four several _liaisons_ successively as Fantomina, Celia the

Chambermaid, the Widow Bloomer, and the fair Incognita. Meanwhile she

meets her lover frequently in public assemblies without ever arousing

his suspicion of her double, or rather manifold identity. But at length

she is unable to disguise the effects of her imprudence, her gallant

ungallantly refuses to marry her, and the fair intriguer is packed off

to a convent in France.

Though the story cannot pretend to support the cause of morality, the

style of this piece is unusually clear and straightforward, sometimes

suitably periphrastic, but never inflated. The passion described is that

of real life ungarnished by romance. Only greater refinement was needed

to make the entertainment fit for ladies and gentlemen.

The cardinal defect of some of Mrs. Haywood's romances-in-little lay,

however, in a romantic over-refinement of the passions rather than in a

too vigorous animalism. Full of the most delicate scruples is "The

Surprise: or, Constancy Rewarded" (1724),[15] appropriately dedicated to

the Sir Galahad of comedy, Sir Richard Steele. The story relates how

Euphemia discovers that the seemingly faithless Bellamant has, in

reality, abandoned her on the day set for their marriage because he was

unwilling to have her share in the loss of his fortune. She, meanwhile,

has inherited a convenient sum, redeems him from his creditors, and

after practicing a little mystification to test his constancy, leads him

to the altar. Few of Mrs. Haywood's novels are more entirely moral or

more essentially dull.

Though the scene of "The Rash Resolve: or, the Untimely Discovery"

(1724) is laid in Porto Rico and in Spain, the romancer took little

advantage of her opportunity to introduce the usual "cloak and sword"

incidents of Spanish fiction. Instead her tale is one of generous love

and melting pathos more characteristic of the romance than of the

_novella_ or its successors.

The Porto Rican heiress, Emanuella, is defrauded of her fortune by her

guardian, Don Pedro, and imprisoned in his house to force her to marry

his son, Don Marco. That generous lover helps her to escape to Madrid,

and to emphasize the truth of her claims against his wily father, falls

upon his sword in the presence of the court. Emanuella's title to her

fortune cleared by this extraordinary measure, she continues to reside

at the house of Don Jabin, whose daughter, Berillia, she saves from a

monastery by making up the deficiency in her dowry. The ungrateful girl,

however, resents Emanuella's disapproval of her foppish lover, and

resolves to be revenged upon her benefactress. She, therefore, forwards

Emanuella's affair with Emilius until the lovers are hopelessly

compromised; then taking advantage of the loss of the lady's fortune at

sea, blackens her character to Emilius and provokes him to desert her.

The abandoned Emanuella enters a convent.

Emilius is challenged by Octavio as a rival in the love of Julia, and

though he had never before heard of the lady, he soon becomes her lover

in fact, and eventually marries her. Emanuella escapes from the nunnery

and wanders to a little provincial town where she bears a son to

Emilius. Berillia, who has been rusticated to a village near by in

consequence of her amour, encounters her unfortunate friend by chance

and runs away from her duenna to join her. She persuades Emanuella to

draw a large sum on Don Jabin, robs her, and goes to join her gallant.

The injured lady supports her child by mean drudgery until by chance she

meets Emilius and his wife, who do all they can to comfort her. But worn

out by her afflictions, she dies of a broken heart, leaving her son to

be adopted by his father.

Dr. Johnson might with equal truth have said to Mrs. Haywood as to the

author of the "Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph," "I know not, Madam,

that you have a right ...to make your readers suffer so much." Even the

pathetic "History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy" has nothing to surpass the

train of woes exhibited in this earlier tale.

In the same "soft" style are two novels, "The Unequal Conflict: or,

Nature Triumphant" (1725) and its sequel, "Fatal Fondness: or, Love its

own Opposer." The plot begins with the writer's favorite situation.

Philenia, affianced to Coeurdemont, falls in love with Fillamour. By the

help of a confidant, Antonia, the lovers are enabled to arrange a plan

of escape. On the eve of the wedding Fillamour breaks into the house

and, leaving his servants to bind and gag the father, flies immediately

to his soul's adored.

"He threw himself on his knees, as he approach'd the dear mistress of

his soul, and with a voice and manner all soft and love-inspiring.--Now

madam, said he, if the adoring Fillamour is not unworthy the glory of

your deliverance, I come to offer it, and to assure you, that not only

this, but the service of my whole future life is entirely devoted to

you. The innocent Philenia had not presently the power of replying, the

different emotions of love, and shame, fear, and joy, made such a

confusion in her sentiments, that she could only look the meanings of

them all: Fillamour, however, found enough in this mute language to make

him know, he was in as fair a way of happiness, as he cou'd wish; and

returning her glances with others as languishing, as the most melting

longing love cou'd teach the loveliest eyes in the world, they

continued, for some moments, thus transmitting souls--" until their

confidant hurries them out of the house.

After the elopement Fillamour is distracted by the opposing motives of

love and interest. To marry Philenia means ruin, for his ambitious

uncle, who has proposed an advantageous marriage to him, would never

forgive him for a love match. The innocent cause of his distress finally

discovers his perplexity and agrees to live a single life until they can

marry without loss of fortune. In this state of affairs "their love

seem'd to be a copy of that pure and immaterial passion, which angels

regard each other with, and, which we are allow'd to hope shall be our

portion, when, shaking off our earth, we meet in a happier world, where

we are to live and love forever." The lovers' paradise is invaded by

Philenia's father, who carries her home and locks her up more closely

than before. In a short time she has the shocking intelligence that

Fillamour has married according to the wishes of his worldly uncle. She

still remains constant to him, but "the remainder of her yet surprising

adventures," remarks the author, "and those of Antonia and Coeurdemont

must be told another time, having good reason to doubt my reader will be

tir'd, when I am so myself."

Eliza was perhaps the first to recover from the fatigue, for in a little

more than two months the continuation, costing sixpence more than the

first instalment, was offered to her readers.

After making his marriage of _convenance_ Fillamour again pays his court

to Philenia, and seizing a lucky moment to surprise her on her daily

walk, half by persuasion, half by force, carries his point. But before

they can meet a second time she is carried off by a gang of villains,

who mistake her for another woman. The languishing Misimene, who has

pursued Fillamour into the country in man's clothes, consoles him for

the loss of his first love. Upon his return to town he finds that his

wife has fled to join her lover. Meanwhile Philenia's honor is preserved

by timely shipwreck of the vessel in which the ravishers are carrying

her off. Washed ashore on the inevitable plank, she supports herself

among the fisher folk by weaving nets until after a year's toil she is

relieved by Antonia and Coeurdemont, now happily married. The relation

of their adventures occupies some pages. Philenia comes back to town to

find her lover weltering in his blood, stabbed by the jealous Misimene.

Believing him dead, she seizes the same sword, plunges it into her

bosom, and instantly expires. Misimene goes into frenzies, and Fillamour

alone recovers to live out a life of undying grief.

"Thus was the crime of giving way to an unwarrantable passion,

punish'd in the persons of Philenia and Misimene, and that of perjury

and ingratitude in Fillamour; while the constancy of Antonia, and the

honour of Coeurdemont, receiv'd the reward their virtues merited, and

they continued, to their lives end, great and shining examples of

conjugal affection."

Apparently Philenia's adventures were somewhat too improbable even for

the taste of readers steeped in melodramatic romances, for if we may

judge by the few copies that have survived, these effusions did not

enjoy a wide popularity. But not to be discouraged by failure, Mrs.

Haywood soon produced another extravagant and complicated romance,

entitled "Cleomelia: or, the Generous Mistress. Being the Secret History

of a Lady Lately arriv'd from Bengall" (1727). The scene might equally

well have been laid in the Isle of Wight, but Bengal on the title-page

doubtless served to whet the curiosity of readers.

Gasper, secretly affianced to Cleomelia, is conveyed out of Bengal by an

avaricious father to prevent him from marrying, and she, believing him

unfaithful, gives her hand to the generous Heartlove. Informed of the

truth by a letter from her lover announcing his speedy return, she

boards a ship bound for England, leaving her husband and lover to fight

a duel in which Heartlove falls. Meanwhile the heroine is shipwrecked,

finds a new suitor in the ship's captain, and hearing of her husband's

death and of Gasper's marriage to a Spanish lady, marries the captain.

Hardly has he departed on his first voyage, when the still faithful

Gasper returns to claim her, only to find her again the bride of

another. In despair he goes to England, and when her second husband is

lost at sea, she follows to reward his constancy.

Cleomelia's generosity does not seem to be as notable as the sub-title

would indicate, but the story was evidently intended to illustrate

virtues exalted to a high romantic level.

With the same end in view Mrs. Haywood attempted an even loftier flight

into the empyrean of romance, with the result that "Philidore and

Placentia: or, L 'Amour trop Delicat" (1727) is more conventional and

stilted than any other work from her pen. It imitates closely the heroic

French romances, both in the inflated style and elaborate regard for the

tender passion, and in the structure of the plot with little histories

of the principal characters interspersed at intervals throughout the

story. In substance the tale is simply a mosaic of romantic adventures,

though some of the hero's wanderings in the desert after being marooned

by pirates and especially his encounter with the "tyger" sound like a

faint echo of "Captain Singleton" or of Captain John Smith's "True

Travels."

The noble Philidore falls in love with the rich and beautiful Placentia,

but as his estate is no match for hers, he contents himself with

entering her service in disguise and performing menial offices for the

pleasure of seeing her. One day she hears him singing in a grotto, and

is charmed by the graceful replies he makes to her questions. A little

later he saves her from robbers at the expense of a slight wound. She

offers to make him groom of her chamber, but fearful of being

recognized, he declines. Finally she lays her fortune at his feet, but

he has too much generosity to accept the offer. Leaving a letter

revealing his true rank and his poverty, he sails for Persia. Some time

later, the return of Placentia's long lost brother, by depriving her of

her fortune, puts her on a level with her lover.

Philidore is captured by pirates and with eleven others set on shore on

a desert strand. Three of the little company reach civilization. After

recuperating their strength, they set out for Persia overland, but a

tiger deprives Philidore of his two companions. A little later he

rescues an unknown youth from three assailants, but not before the

stranger has been seriously wounded. A passing traveller carries them to

the castle of a Persian nobleman. There Philidore waits with the utmost

impatience for the wounded man to recover strength enough to relate his

story, but this, as also the misfortunes, perplexities, and dangers to

which the despairing passion of the enamoured Placentia occasioned her

to reduce herself, and the catastrophe of Philidore's surprising fate,

must be told in a Second Part.

Part II. The youthful stranger, concealing his name and family, relates

the sad effects of his love for the favorite wife of the Bashaw of

Liperto, and how by her aid he was enabled to escape from slavery, only

to be pursued and about to be retaken by janizaries when rescued by

Philidore.

Our hero is kindly received by his uncle in Persia, who soon dies and

leaves him sole heir of an enormous fortune. He is now Placentia's equal

in wealth as well as rank, and immediately embarks for England. Driven

into Baravat by contrary winds, he is moved to ransom a female captive

on hearing of her grief at her hard fate, but what is his surprise when

the fair slave proves to be Placentia. "Kisses, embraces, and all the

fond endearments of rewarded passion made up for their want of speech--

in their expressive looks, and eager graspings, the violence of their

mutual flame was more plainly demonstrated, than it could have been by

the greatest elegance of language--those of the Persians that stood by,

who understood not English, easily perceived, not only that they were

lovers, but also that they were so to the most unbounded height of

tender passion."

Placentia relates how she had eluded her brother and set sail to rejoin

her lover, how she had been saved from the arms of the brutal ship's

captain by a timely attack of pirates, and how, sold to a Moslem

merchant and still annoyed by the attentions of the captain, she had

abandoned all thoughts of life till redeemed by Philidore's generosity.

With Placentia, her maid, and young Tradewell, the maid's lover,

ransomed, Philidore sails blissfully to England. But upon landing

Placentia becomes suddenly cold to him. He forces his way into her

house, and finds that her brother is the young stranger whose life he

had saved in Persia. Meanwhile Placentia, whose fortune is now no match

for Philidore's, flees to parts unknown, leaving a letter conjuring him

to forget her. After a long search the brother and lover find her place

of concealment, and the former removes her scruples by settling a large

estate upon her. "Nothing could be more splendid than the celebration of

their nuptials; and of their future bliss, the reader may better judge

by their almost unexampled love, their constancy, their generosity and

nobleness of soul, than by any description I am able to give of it."

"Philidore and Placentia" is one of the few novels by Mrs. Haywood that

do not pretend to a moral purpose. Realism needed some justification,

for realism at the time almost invariably meant a picture of vice and

folly, and an author could not expose objectionable things except in the

hope that they would lessen in fact as they increased in fiction. But in

spite of the disapproval sometimes expressed for fables on the ground of

their inherent untruth, idealistic romances were generally justified as

mirrors of all desirable virtues. Pious Mrs. Penelope Aubin wrote no

other kind of fiction, though she sometimes admitted a deep-dyed villain

for the sake of showing his condign punishment at the hands of

providence. It was perhaps due to the sale of this lady's novels,

largely advertised toward the end of 1727 and apparently very

successful, that Mrs. Haywood was encouraged to desert her favorite

field of exemplary novels showing the dangerous effects of passion for

an excursion into pure romance. That she found the attempt neither

congenial nor profitable may be inferred from the fact that it was not

repeated.

If the highly imaginary romances suffered from an excess of delicacy,

certain other tales by Mrs. Haywood overleaped decency as far on the

other side. The tendency of fiction before Richardson was not toward

refinement. The models, French and Spanish, which writers in England

found profit in imitating, racked sensationalism to the utmost degree by

stories of horrible and perverted lust. All the excitement that could be

obtained from incest, threatened, narrowly averted, or actually

committed, was offered to eager readers. Usually, as in Defoe's "Moll

Flanders" or Fielding's "Tom Jones," ignorance of birth was an essential

element in the plot. A story of this type in which the catastrophe is

prevented by a timely discovery of the hero's parentage, is "The Force

of Nature: or, the Lucky Disappointment" (1725).

Felisinda, daughter of Don Alvario of Valladolid, falls in love with a

dependent of her father's named Fernando, who returns her passion, but

when by a dropped letter she reveals their mutual tenderness, her father

becomes exceedingly disordered and threatens to marry her out of hand to

Don Carlos, who had long solicited the match. That generous lover,

however, refuses to marry her against her will. The disappointment

proves mortal to Don Alvario, who leaves his estate to Felisinda and

Fernando equally, provided they do not marry each other. Felisinda is

committed to the care of an abbess named Berinthia, but by the aid of a

probationer, Alantha, the lovers manage to correspond. They agree that

Fernando shall convert his moiety to ready money, convey it to Brussels,

and there await Felisinda, whose escape he entrusts to a friend,

Cleomas. Alantha, meantime, has fallen in love with Fernando, and

substitutes herself for Felisinda. Cleomas in conducting the supposed

mistress of his friend to the nearest port falls under the influence of

her beauty and attempts to betray her, but is prevented and slain by a

chance passenger, who turns out to be Carlos. He brings Alantha to a

better mind, and conducts her in search of Fernando, but they discover

in Brussels that he has set out again for Spain. When Fernando reaches

Valladolid to inquire what has become of Cleomas and his lady, he is

arrested on the charge of abducting Alantha. At the trial he is accused

of having made away with her, and is sentenced to death, whereupon

Berinthia, the abbess, faints, and being revived, owns him for her son

by Alvario, and "in tears and blessings pours out all the mother on

him." At the proper moment Carlos comes in with Alantha to prove

Fernando's innocence. Felisinda rewards the constancy of Carlos, and

Fernando can do no less than marry Alantha.

Incest is almost the only crime not to be found in the extraordinary

series of barefaced and infamous intrigues crowded into the pages of

"The Injur'd Husband: or, the Mistaken Resentment" (1723). The author

naively remarks in the dedication that "The Subject of the Trifle I

presume to offer, is, The Worst of Women," and she has indeed

out-villained the blackest of her male villains in the character of the

wicked Baroness.

The doting Baron de Tortillee marries the lascivious and extravagant

Mademoiselle La Motte, who promotes the villainous Du Lache to be the

instrument of her vile pleasures. After enjoying several lovers of his

procuring, she fixes her affections upon the worthy Beauclair. Du Lache

despairs of ensnaring him, because he is about to marry the lovely

Montamour, but by a series of base expedients he manages to blacken the

character of that lady in her lover's eyes, and to put the charms of the

Baroness in such a light that Beauclair is at length drawn in to pay his

court to her. For some time she thus successfully deludes her husband,

but when the despicable La Branche openly boasts of her favors and

allows some of her letters to fall into the hands of one of her numerous

lovers, her perfidy is soon completely exposed. To add to her confusion

she hears that the Baron, whom she had drugged into idiocy and sent into

the country, has been cured by a skilful physician and is about to

return. Du Lache despatches two assassins to murder him on the road, but

the Baron by a lucky chance escapes the murderers, forces them to

confess, and sets out to punish his guilty wife. Meanwhile Beauclair

suspects that he has wronged his innocent lady and endeavors to see her,

but she at first refuses to see him, and when by a ruse he gains access

to her presence, will not listen to him or give him any grounds for

hope. In despair he returns to Paris and meets the young Vrayment. He

discovers the infamous Du Lache hiding in a convent. To save his life

the wretch offers to reveal the frauds he had put in practice against

Montamour, but while he is doing so, the Baron meets them, and

concluding that Beauclair is in collusion with the villain, attacks them

both. Beauclair disarms his antagonist and is about to return him his

weapon, when Du Lache stabs the Baron in the back. Vrayment has

witnessed the quarrel and summoned assistance. Beauclair and Du Lache

are haled before a magistrate and are about to be condemned equally for

the crime, when Vrayment reveals herself as Montamour disguised as a

man, and persuades the judge that Beauclair is innocent. Du Lache and

his accomplices are broken on the wheel, the Baroness takes poison, and

Beauclair is united to his faithful Montamour.

In the conduct of the story the writer shows no deficiency in expressing

the passions, but rather a want of measure, for thrill follows thrill so

fast that the reader can hardly realize what is happening. And as if the

lusts and crimes of the Baroness did not furnish enough sensational

incidents, the tender romance of Beauclair and Montamour is superadded.

The hero is a common romantic type, easily inconstant, but rewarded

above his merits by a faithful mistress. A woman disguised as a man was

a favorite device with Mrs. Haywood as well as with other writers of

love stories, but one need read only the brazen Mrs. Charke's memoirs or

Defoe's realistic "Moll Flanders" to discover that it was a device not

unheard of in real life. The actual occurrence of such disguises,

however, made no difference to the female writers of fiction. Anything

soul-stirring, whether from romances or from plays, was equally grist to

their mills.

In seeking for the most dramatic _dénouements_ sensational romancers

were not long in perceiving the suspense that could be produced by

involving the chief characters in a trial for their lives. Mrs. Behn had

by that means considerably protracted the interest in "The Fair Jilt:

or, the Amours of Prince Tarquin and Miranda" (1688), and Mrs. Haywood,

following her example, succeeded in giving a last stimulus to the jaded

nerves of the readers of "The Force of Nature" and "The Injur'd

Husband." And finally the title-page of an anonymous work attributed to

her indicates that the struggling authoress was not insensible to the

popular demand for romances of roguery. A prospective buyer might have

imagined that he was securing a criminal biography in "Memoirs of the

Baron de Brosse, Who was Broke on the Wheel in the Reign of Lewis XIV.

Containing, An Account of his Amours. With Several Particulars relating

to the Wars in those Times," but the promise of the title was

unfulfilled, for Mrs. Haywood was no journalist to make capital out of a

malefactor's exit from the world. The whole book is a chronicle of the

Baron's unsuccessful pursuit of a hard-hearted beauty named Larissa,

mingled with little histories of the Baron's rivals, of a languishing

Madam de Monbray, and of Larissa's mother. The fair charmer finally

marries a count, and her lover, plunged into adequate despair, can

barely exert himself to answer a false accusation trumped up by the

revengeful Monbray. With the verdict in his favor the story ends

abruptly, and the promised continuation was apparently never written. We

read nothing of the wars, nor of the Baron's execution on the wheel.

Tortures, tragedies of blood, and heinous crimes added piquancy to Mrs.

Haywood's love stories, but were not the normal material of her

romances. Her talent was chiefly for "soft things." She preferred the

novel of intrigue and passion in which the characters could be run

through a breathless maze of amatory adventures, with a pause now and

again to relate a digressive episode for variety's sake. Typical of this

sort, the best adapted to the romancer's genius, is "The Agreeable

Caledonian: or, Memoirs of Signiora di Morella, a Roman Lady, Who made

her Escape from a Monastery at Viterbo, for the Love of a Scots

Nobleman. Intermix'd with many other Entertaining little Histories and

Adventures which presented themselves to her in the Course of her

Travels." No moralizing, no romantic idealism disturbs the rapid current

of events. It is a pure "cloak and sword" novel, definitely located in

Italy, with all the machinery of secret assignations, escapes from

convents, adventures on the road and at inns, sudden assaults, duels,

seductions, and revenge characteristic of Spanish fiction.

Don Jaques di Morella determines to marry his daughter, Clementina, to a

certain Cardinal, who has offered to renounce the scarlet hat for love

of her. When she piques her lover by her evident unwillingness to wed,

Don Jaques packs her off to a convent at Viterbo. By picking up a copy

of verses Clementina becomes acquainted with Signiora Miramene, who

relates the history of her correspondence with the Baron Glencairn.

Clementina becomes the instrument of the lovers, but no sooner sees the

lovely North Briton than she herself is captivated. In response to her

proffered affection, Glencairn manages by an extraordinary device to

convey her out of the convent. In spite of the rage of Dan Jaques they

escape to Sienna. The further surprising turns in their affairs to be

later communicated to the public.

Part II. At Sienna the lovers enjoy a season of perfect felicity until

Don Jaques comes to town in pursuit of a defaulting steward, discovers

Clementina, and apprehends the pair. While the two are confined in

separate convents awaiting trial, Clementina's maid, Ismenia (who has

already related her little history), becomes their go-between and serves

her mistress the same trick that Clementina had already played upon her

friend Miramene. Ismenia and the faithless Baron decamp to parts

unknown, while Clementina's father starts back to Rome with his recreant

daughter. In man's clothes she escapes from her parent to seek revenge

upon her lover. At an inn she hears a woman in the next room complaining

of her gallant's desertion, and going in to console her, hears the

moving story of Signiora Vicino and Monsieur Beaumont, told as a warning

to the credulous and unwary sex. The injured fair enters a convent.

Still in pursuit of her lover, Clementina on Montelupe meets the funeral

of a young woman who had been torn to pieces by wolves. The chief

mourner proves to be Glencairn. She is hindered in an attempt to stab

him and thrown into prison, where he visits her and disarms her

resentment by offering to marry her. After the ceremony they proceed to

Paris where each plunges into dissipation. Finally they separate,

Clementina dies of a fever, and the Baron is left free to pursue his

inclinations through a possible third part, which, however, was never

written.

After a slumber of forty years "The Agreeable Caledonian" was reprinted,

as the "Monthly Review" informs us, from a copy corrected by Mrs.

Haywood not long before her death.[16] The review continues, "It is like

the rest of Mrs. Haywood's novels, written in a tawdry style, now

utterly exploded; the romances of these days being reduced much nearer

the standard of nature, and to the manners of the living world." Realism

is, indeed, far to seek in the brief but intricate tissue of incidents

that made the novel of 1728. To a taste accustomed to "Sir Charles

Grandison," and "Peregrine Pickle," and "The Sentimental Journey" the

rehash of Eliza Haywood's novel must have seemed very far even from the

manners of the world of fiction. The judgment of the "Critical Review"

was still more savage in its accuracy.[17] "This is a republication of a

dull, profligate Haywoodian production, in which all the males are

rogues, and all the females whores, without a glimpse of plot, fable, or

sentiment." In its uncompromising literalness the critic's verdict ranks

with the learned Ascham's opinion of the "Morte D'Arthur,"--except that

it has not been superseded. The same animadversion might be urged

against Defoe's "Colonel Jacque" or "The Fortunate Mistress." If Mrs.

Haywood sinned against the standards of the age to come, she was not out

of touch with the spirit of her own generation.

As a writer she knew but one unfailing recipe for popularity: whatever

she touched must be forthwith gilded with passion. The chief _raison

d'être_ for "The Fair Hebrew: or, a True, but Secret History of Two

Jewish Ladies, Who lately resided in London" (1729) was to gratify the

prejudices of anti-Semitic readers, yet it is hardly distinguishable

from her sentimental love stories.

The young and gay Dorante, going to the synagogue for a lark, is tempted

by the sight of a fair hand to break into the woman's apartment and to

expose himself to the charms of the beautiful Kesiah. He engages her in

a correspondence, but at their first interview she gives him clearly to

understand that he can gain nothing from her but by marriage. Driven by

his unhappy passion, he complies with her demand, and she becomes a

Church of England woman. But once married, Kesiah is too proud to permit

the concealment that prudence demands. Though his father is sure to

disinherit them, she insists upon revealing the marriage.

Dorante entrusts his small stock of money to his wife's brother,

Abimelech, in order to start him in trade. The Jew goes to Holland with

a woman whom he has saved from religious murder at the hands of a

Levite, and nothing further is heard from him or the money. Imprisoned

by his creditors, Dorante is persuaded by his wife to sign away the

entail of his estate in return for a sum of money. Thereupon she departs

with the gold and a new gallant, leaving her unhappy husband to be

rescued from want by the kindness, of a younger brother. After the poor

solace of hearing that Kesiah and her paramour have been lost at sea, he

dies of a broken heart.[18]

Though Eliza Haywood exhausted nearly every possible bit of

sensationalism that could be extracted from tales of passion, she almost

never made use of the heroic feats of arms which constituted a no less

important resource of the French romances. Her heroes are victors in

love but not in war. The sole exception is a little romance of Moorish

chivalry in the eighth century. Though this period had already been

pre-empted by Mrs. Manley's "Memoirs of Europe," there is little doubt

that Mrs. Haywood was responsible for "The Arragonian Queen: A Secret

History" (1724), a peculiar blend of heroic adventures in battle,

bullfight, and tournament, with amorous intrigues of the most involved

kind.

Prince Albaraizor of Arragon goes to assist Omar, King of Valencia,

against a traitorous foe, and with the help of the young general,

Abdelhamar, succeeds in vanquishing the enemy, though the latter youth

is seriously wounded while performing miracles of valor. To reward the

conqueror the hand of the Princess Zephalinda is bestowed upon him, but

she unfortunately is already enamored of Abdelhamar, whom she had

learned to love at a bullfight. But in spite of a repining letter from

her constant lover, and in spite of his appearance before her all pale

and trembling from his wounds, the Princess refuses to deviate from her

duty.

"The next Day the Marriage was celebrated with all the intended

Magnificence, and on their return from the Mosque, the Prince and

Princess repair'd to a stately Scaffold, adorn'd with inventive

Luxury, whence they might behold a Tournament, the Prize of which was

a Sword richly embellish'd with Diamonds, to be given by the Princess

to him that should overcome; the whole Court were there, endeavouring

to outshine each other in the Costliness of their Apparel--within the

Barriers were all the Flower of the adjoining Kingdoms, drawn thither

with a Thirst of Fame, and a Desire to shew their Dexterity. The

Arragonian Noblemen were the Defenders against all Comers, and were

like to have carried away the Prize, behaving themselves with the

utmost Skill and Courage, when there appear'd in the Lists a Knight in

black Armour, whose whole Air and dexterity in Horsemanship

immediately attracted the Eyes of the numerous Spectators; the first

Course he made, confirm'd them in the good opinion they had conceiv'd

of him: in short, no body was able to stand against him, and he

remain'd Conqueror, with the universal Applause of the whole Company.

--He waited for some time, to see if no fresh Challengers would offer

themselves; but none appearing, he was led to the Princess's Scaffold,

to receive the Reward he had so well merited: He took it with the

greatest Submission, but without putting up his Beaver, or discovering

who he was, and kissing it with profound Respect, retir'd, without so

much as making any obeisance to the King or Prince; and mixing himself

with the Crowd of Knights, got off without being discover'd. Every

body was surpriz'd at the uncourteous Behaviour of so otherwise

accomplish'd a Cavalier, but none could possibly give the least guess

at who it should be--the succeeding Diversions soon put him out of

every body's Thoughts but Zephalinda's; she well knew it could be none

but Abdelhamar, and trembled lest he should have been discovered,

fearing his concealing his Recovery, and his disrespectful Carriage

towards her Father and her Husband, might have given room to Surmises

prejudicial to her Honour: but when watching him with her Eyes, and

seeing him get off unfollow'd, or observ'd, she then began afresh to

pine at Fate, who could render Abdelhamar Conqueror in every Action

that he undertook, and only vanquish'd when he fought in hopes of

gaining her."

The Prince and his bride return to their own country to receive the

crown. By the most tender assiduities Albaraizor has almost succeeded in

gaining the love of his wife when Abdelhamar again intrudes as

ambassador to congratulate him on his coronation. Though her old love

returns more strongly than ever, the Queen guards her honor well, and

insists that her lover marry Selyma, a captive Princess. But that lady,

stung by Abdelhamar's indifference, learns to hate him, and out of

revenge persuades the King that his wife is unfaithful to him. An

indiscreet letter from Abdelhamar confirms his suspicions. He orders

both Queen and ambassador cast into prison and by his woes destroys the

happiness of the whole court.

The passages relating the monarch's love and jealousy are described with

a fulness entirely lacking in the tournament scene quoted above, and we

may fairly infer that both writer and reader were more deeply interested

in affairs of the heart than in feats of arms, however glorious. The

emphasis given to love rather than to war in this tale is significant as

a contrast to the opposite tendency in such romances of a century later

as "Ivanhoe," in which a tournament scene very similar in outline to

that in "The Arragonian Queen" is told with the greatest attention to

warlike detail, while the love story, though not allowed to languish, is

kept distinctly subordinate to the narrative of chivalric adventure.

Mrs. Haywood, however, was too warm-blooded a creature to put aside the

interests of the heart for the sake of a barbarous Gothic brawl, and too

experienced a writer not to know that her greatest forte lay in painting

the tender rather than the sterner passions.

In this respect she forms a decided contrast to Defoe, whose men and

women are almost never startled out of their matter-of-fact attitude.

His picaresque characters, though outwardly rogues or their female

counterparts, have at bottom something of the dissenting parson and

cool-headed, middle-aged man of business. Whatever else they may be,

they are never love-sick. Passion is to them a questionable asset, and

if they marry, they are like to have the matter over with in the course

of half a paragraph. Eliza Haywood, however, possessed in excess the one

gift that Defoe lacked. To the scribbling authoress love was the force

that motivated all the world. Crude and conventional as are many of her

repeated attempts to analyze the workings of a mind under the sway of

soft desires, she nevertheless succeeded now and then in actuating her

heroines with genuine emotion. Both romance and realism were woven into

the intricate web of the Richardsonian novel, and the contribution of

Mrs. Haywood deserves to be remembered if only because she supplied the

one element missing in Defoe's masterpieces. Each writer in his day was

considered paramount in his or her particular field.[19]

FOOTNOTES

[1]

_Les Héros de Roman_, 1664, circulated in MS. and printed in 1688

without the consent of the author. Not included in Boileau's _Works_

until 1713.

[2]

The story of Tellisinda, who to avoid the reproach of barrenness imposes

an adopted child upon her husband, but later bearing a son, is obliged

to see a spurious heir inherit her own child's estate, was borrowed with

slight changes from La Belle Assemblée, I, Day 5, and used in Mrs.

Haywood's _Fruitless Enquiry_, (1727).

[3]

_La Pierre philosophale des dames, ou les Caprices de l'amour et du

destin_, by Louis Adrien Duperron de Castera, (1723), 12mo.

[4]

_L'Illustre Parisienne_, (1679), variously attributed to Préchac and to

Mme de Villedieu, had already been translated as _The Illustrious

Parisian Maid, or The Secret Amours of a German Prince_, (1680). A

synopsis is given by H.E. Chatenet, _Le Roman et les Romans d'une femme

de lettres ... Mme de Villedieu_, (Paris, 1911), 253-9.

[5]

I have not seen a copy of the book.

[6]

Mrs. E. Griffith's comment on the work is typical of the tendency to

moralize even the amusements of the day. See _A Collection of Novels_,

(1777), II, 162. "The idea on which this piece is founded, has a good

deal of merit in it; as tending to abate envy, and conciliate content;

by shewing, in a variety of instances, that appearances are frequently

fallacious; that perfect or permanent happiness is not the lot of mortal

life; and that peace of mind and rational enjoyment are only to be found

in bosoms free from guilt, and from intimate connection with the

guilty."

[7]

I have omitted two or three unessential stories in the analysis.

[8]

Act I, sc. ii. In the novel the heroine is shut up by a miserly hunks of

an uncle to force her into a detested mercenary match with his son. In

the play the mistress is the wife of the old and jealous keeper of the

asylum.

[9]

Preface to _The Mercenary Lover_, (1726).

[10]

_The Rash Resolve_, (1724).

[11]

_The Double Marriage_, (1726).

[12]

Lodge's _Rosalynde, ed._ E.C. Baldwin, p. 19. _Philidore and Placentia_

(1727), p. 12.

[13]

Miss C.E. Morgan, _The Novel of Manners_, (1911), 100.

[14]

A companion-piece to the third edition of _The Mercenary Lover_, (1728).

[15]

A companion-piece to _The Fatal Secret: or, Constancy in Distress_.

[16]

_Monthly Review_, XXXVIII, 412, May, 1768. _Clementina; or the History

of an Italian Lady, who made her Escape from a Monastery,_ etc.

[17]

_Critical Review_, XXV, 59.

[18]

In both editions is advertised "Persecuted Virtue: or, the Cruel Lover.

A True Secret History, Writ at the Request of a Lady of Quality," which

was advertised also in the _Daily Post_, 28 Nov. 1728. I have not found

a copy.

[19]

An anonymous poem prefixed to Mrs. Elizabeth Boyd's _The Happy

Unfortunate; or, the Female Page_ (1737) testifies to Mrs. Haywood's

reputation in the following terms:

"Yeild [_sic_] Heywood yeild, yeild all whose tender Strains,

Inspire the Dreams of Maids and lovesick Swains;

Who taint the unripen'd Girl with amorous Fire,

And hint the first faint Dawnings of Desire:

Wing each Love-Atom, that in Embryo lies,

And teach young Parthenissa's Breasts to rise.

A new Elisa writes," etc., etc.

CHAPTER III

THE DUNCAN CAMPBELL PAMPHLETS

Only once did Eliza Haywood compete with Defoe upon the same ground.

Both novelists were alive to the value of sensational matter, but as we

have seen, appealed to the reader's emotional nature from different

sides. Defoe with his strong interest in practical life looked for

stirring incidents, for strange and surprising adventures on land and

sea, for unusual or uncanny occurrences; whereas Mrs. Haywood, less a

journalist than a romancer, rested her claim to public favor upon the

secure basis of the tender passions. In the books exploiting the deaf

and dumb prophet Duncan Campbell, whose fame, once illustrated by

notices in the "Tatler" and "Spectator,"[1] was becoming a little dimmed

by 1720, each writer chose the kind of material that the natural

propensity and previous experience of each had trained him or her to use

with the greatest success.

Accordingly the "History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan

Campbell, a gentleman who, though deaf and dumb, writes down any

stranger's name at first sight, with their future contingencies of

fortune: Now living in Exeter Court, over against the Savoy in the

Strand," published by Curll on 30 April, 1720, and written largely by

Defoe, devoted only four chapters directly to the narrative of the

conjuror's life, while four chapters and the Appendix were given over to

disquisitions upon the method of teaching deaf and dumb persons to read

and write; upon the perception of demons, genii, or familiar spirits;

upon the second sight; upon magic in all its branches; and upon the laws

against false diviners and soothsayers. Beside showing the keenness of

his interest in the supernatural, the author deliberately avoided any

occasion for talking gossip or for indulging "persons of airy tempers"

with sentimental love-tales. "Instead of making them a bill of fare out

of patchwork romances and polluting scandal," reads the preface signed

by Duncan Campbell, "the good old gentleman who wrote the adventures of

my life has made it his business to treat them with a great variety of

entertaining passages which always terminate in morals that tend to the

edification of all readers, of whatsoever sex, age, or profession."

Those who came to consult the seer on affairs of the heart, therefore,

received only the scantiest mention from his biographer, and never were

the languishing and sighing of Mr. Campbell's devotees described with

any romantic glamor. On the contrary, Defoe portrayed in terse and

homely phrases the follies and affectations of the dumb man's fair

clients. The young blooming beauty who found little Duncan "wallowing in

the dust" and bribed him with a sugarplum to reveal the name of her

future husband; the "sempstress with an itching desire for a parson";

housekeepers in search of stolen goods; the "widow who bounced" from one

end of the room to the other and finally "scuttled too airily downstairs

for a woman in her clothes"; and the chambermaid disguised as a fine

lady, who by "the toss of her head, the jut of the bum, the sidelong

leer of the eye" proclaimed her real condition--these types are treated

by Defoe in a blunt realistic manner entirely foreign to Eliza Haywood's

vein. Some passages,[2] perhaps, by a sentiment too exalted or by a

description in romantic style suggest the hand of another writer,

possibly Mrs. Haywood, but more probably William Bond, in whose name the

reprint of 1728 was issued.[3] But in the main, the book reflected

Defoe's strong tendency to speculate upon unusual and supernatural

phenomena, and utterly failed to "divulge the secret intrigues and

amours of one part of the sex, to give the other part room to make

favorite scandal the subject of their discourse."[4]

That Defoe had refrained from treating one important aspect of Duncan

Campbell's activities he was well aware. "If I was to tell his

adventures with regard, for instance, to women that came to consult him,

I might, perhaps, have not only written the stories of eleven thousand

virgins that died maids, but have had the relations to give of as many

married women and widows, and the work would have been endless."[5] In

his biography of the Scotch prophet he does not propose to clog the

reader with any adventures save the most remarkable and those in various

ways mysterious.

The "method of swelling distorted and commented trifles into volumes" he

is content to leave to the writers of fable and romance. It was not long

before the press-agents of the dumb presager found a romancer willing to

undertake the task that Defoe neglected. Mrs. Haywood in her association

with Aaron Hill and his circle could hardly have escaped knowing William

Bond, who in 1724 was playing Steele to Hill's Addison in producing the

numbers of the "Plain Dealer." Instigated perhaps by him, the rising

young novelist contributed on 19 March, 1724, the second considerable

work on the fortune-teller, under the caption: "A Spy upon the Conjurer:

or, a Collection of Surprising Stories, with Names, Places, and

particular Circumstances relating to Mr. Duncan Campbell, commonly known

by the Name of the Deaf and Dumb Man; and the astonishing Penetration

and Event of his Predictions. Written to my Lord---- by a Lady, who for

more than Twenty Years past; has made it her Business to observe all

Transactions in the Life and Conversation of Mr. Campbell."[5a]

"As long as Atalantis shall be read," some readers were sure to find

little to their taste in the curious information contained in the first

biography of Campbell, but Mrs. Haywood was not reluctant to gratify an

appetite for scandal when she could profitably cater to it. Developing

the clue afforded her by the announcement in Defoe's "Life and

Adventures" of a forthcoming little pocket volume of original letters

that passed between Mr. Campbell and his correspondents,[6] she composed

a number of epistles as coming from all sorts of applicants to the

prophet. These missives, however, were preceded by a long letter

addressed to an anonymous lord and signed "Justicia," which was chiefly

concocted of anecdotes illustrative of the dumb man's powers. Unlike the

incidents in Defoe's work, the greater number of the stories relate to

love affairs in the course of which one party or the other invoked the

seer's assistance. Although the author was thoroughly acquainted with

the previous history of Mr. Campbell,[7] she was evidently more

interested in the phenomena of passion than in the theory of divination,

A brief discussion of astrology, witchcraft, and dreams easily led her

to a narrative of "Mr. Campbell's sincerity exemplify'd, in the story of

a lady injured in the tenderest part by a pretended friend." A glance

through the table of contents reveals the preponderance of such headings

as "A strange story of a young lady, who came to ask the name of her

husband"; "A whimsical story of an old lady who wanted a husband";

"Reflections on the inconstancy of men. A proof of it in a ruin'd girl,

that came to ask Mr. Campbell's advice"; "A story of my Lady

Love-Puppy"; "A merry story of a lady's chamber-maid, cook-maid, and

coach-man," and so on. Evidences of an attempt to suggest, if not actual

references to, contemporary scandal, are to be found in such items as "A

strange instance of vanity and jealousy in the behaviour of Mrs. F--- ";

"The particulars of the fate of Mrs. J---- L---- "; and "A story of

the Duke of---- 's mistress." It is not surprising that "Memoirs of a

Certain Island" appeared within six months of "A Spy upon the Conjurer."

When "Justicia" refers to her personal relations with the lord to whom

her letter is addressed, her comments are still more in keeping with the

acknowledged forte of the lady novelist. They are permeated with the

tenderest emotions. The author of "Moll Flanders" and "The Fortunate

Mistress" might moralize upon the unhappy consequences of love, but he

was inclined to regard passion with an equal mind. He stated facts

simply. Love, in his opinion, was not a strong motive when uncombined

with interest. But Eliza Haywood held the romantic watchword of all for

love, and her books are a continual illustration of _Amor vincit omnia_.

In the present case her words seem to indicate that the passions of love

and jealousy so often experienced by her characters were not unfamiliar

to her own breast. Even Duncan Campbell's predictions were unable to

alter her destiny.

"But tho' I was far enough from disbelieving what he said, yet Youth,

Passion, and Inadvertency render'd his Cautions ineffectual. It was in

his Hand-Writing I first beheld the dear fatal Name, which has since

been the utter Destruction of my Peace: It was from him I knew I

should be undone by Love and the Perfidy of Mankind, before I had the

least Notion of the one, or had seen any of the other charming enough

to give me either Pain or Pleasure.... Yet besotted as I was, I had

neither the Power of defending myself from the Assaults of Love, nor

Thought sufficient to enable me to make those Preparations which were

necessary for my future Support, while I had yet the means" ...(p.

13).

"Yet so it is with our inconsiderate Sex!--To vent a present Passion,

--for the short liv'd Ease of railing at the Baseness of an ungrateful

Lover,--to gain a little Pity,--we proclaim our Folly, and become the

Jest of all who know us.--A forsaken Woman immediately grows the

Object of Derision,--rallied by the Men, and pointed at by every

little Flirt, who fancies herself secure in her own Charms of never

being so, and thinks 'tis want of Merit only makes a Wretch.

"For my dear Lord, I am sensible, tho' our Wounds have been a long

time heal'd, there yet remains a Tenderness, which, if touch'd, will

smart afresh.--The Darts of Passion, such as we have felt, make too

indeliable an Impression ever to be quite eraz'd;--they are not

content with the eternal Sear they leave on the Reputation ..."

(p.76).

These passages are in substance and style after Eliza Haywood's manner,

while the experiences therein hinted at do not differ essentially from

the circumstances of her own life.

The various aspects of love and jealousy are also the theme of the

second and third parts of "A Spy upon the Conjurer."[8] The two packets

of letters were merely imaginary, unless the pseudonymous signatures of

some of the missives may have aided contemporary readers to "smoke"

allusions to current gossip. At any rate the references are now happily

beyond our power to fathom.

Apparently the taste for Duncan Campbell anecdotes was stimulated by the

piquant sauce of scandal, for beside the several issues of "A Spy upon

the Conjurer" a second and smaller volume of the same sort was published

on 10 May, 1725. This sixpenny pamphlet of forty pages, entitled "The

Dumb Projector: Being a Surprizing Account of a Trip to Holland made by

Mr. Duncan Campbell. With the Manner of his Reception and Behaviour

there. As also the various and diverting Occurrences that happened on

his Departure," was, like the former work, couched in the form of a

letter to a nobleman and signed "Justicia." Both from internal

evidence[9] and from the style it can be assigned with confidence to the

author of "A Spy upon the Conjurer." The story, relating how Mr.

Campbell was induced to go into Holland in the hope of making his

fortune, how he was disappointed, the extraordinary instances of his

power, and his adventures amatory and otherwise, is of little importance

as a narrative. The account differs widely from that of Campbell's trip

to the Netherlands in the "Life and Adventures" of 1720.

Soon after the publication of "The Dumb Projector" Defoe also made a

second contribution to the now considerable Duncan Campbell literature

under the title of "The Friendly Daemon: or, the Generous Apparition.

Being a True Narrative of a Miraculous Cure newly performed upon ... Dr.

Duncan Campbell, by a familiar Spirit, that appeared to him in a white

surplice, like a Cathedral Singing Boy." The quotation of the story from

Glanvil already used by the prophet's original biographer, and the keen

interest in questions of the supernatural displayed by the writer, make

the attribution of this piece to Defoe a practical certainty. Evidently,

then, Eliza Haywood was not the only one to profit by keeping alive the

celebrity of the fortune-teller.

The year 1728 was marked by the reissue of the "Life and Adventures" as

"The Supernatural Philosopher ... by William Bond," whose probable

connection with the work has already been discussed, and by the

publication in the "Craftsman"[10] of a letter, signed "Fidelia,"

describing a visit to Duncan Campbell. The writer, who professes an

intense admiration for Mr. Caleb D'Anvers and all his works, relates how

the dumb oracle, after writing down her name, had prophesied that the

Craftsman would certainly gain his point in 1729. She concludes with

praise of Mr. Campbell, and an offer to conduct Caleb to visit him on

the ensuing Saturday. That the communication was not to be regarded as a

companion-piece to the letter from Dulcibela Thankley in the "Spectator"

(No. 474), was the purport of the editorial statement which introduced

it: "I shall make no other Apology for the Vanity, which I may seem

guilty of in publishing the following Letter, than assuring the Reader

it is _genuine_, and that I do it in Complyance with the repeated

Importunity of a _fair Correspondent_." The style of the letter does not

strongly suggest that of "A Spy upon the Conjurer," though the

concluding sentence, "_Love_ shall be there too, who waits forever upon

_Wit_," is a sentiment after Eliza's heart. And moreover, though

"Fidelia" and "Justicia" may be one and the same persons, Mr. D'Anvers'

assurances that the letter is genuine are not to be relied upon with too

much confidence, for had he wished to praise himself, he would naturally

have resorted to some such device.

The last volume relating to the Scotch wizard did not appear until 1732,

two years after Campbell's death. "Secret Memoirs of the late Mr. Duncan

Campbel, The famous Deaf and Dumb Gentleman. Written by Himself, who

ordered they should be publish'd after his Decease," consisted of 164

pages devoted to miscellaneous anecdotes of the prophet, a reprint of

Defoe's "Friendly Daemon" (p. 166), "Original Letters sent to Mr.

Campbel by his Consulters" (p. 196), and "An Appendix, By Way of

Vindication of Mr. Duncan Campbel, Against That groundless Aspersion

cast upon him, That he but pretended to be Deaf and Dumb. By a Friend of

the Deceased" (p. 225). The authorship of this book has received but

slight attention from students of Defoe, and still remains something of

a puzzle. No external evidence on the point has yet come to light, but

some probable conclusions may be reached through an examination of the

substance and style.

In the first place, there is no probability--the statement on the

title-page notwithstanding--that Mr. Campbell himself had anything to do

with the composition of the "Memoirs." Since the magician had taken no

part in the literary exploitation of his fame during his lifetime, it is

fair to infer that he did not begin to do so two years after his death.

Moreover, each of the three writers, Bond, Defoe, and Eliza Haywood,

already identified with the Campbell pamphlets was perfectly capable of

passing off fiction as feigned biography. Both the author of "Memoirs of

a Cavalier" and the scribbler of secret histories had repeatedly used

the device. There is no evidence, however, that William Bond had any

connection with the present work, but a large share of it was almost

certainly done by Defoe and Mrs. Haywood.

The former had died full of years on 26 April, 1731, about a year before

the "Secret Memoirs" was published. It is possible, however, that he may

have assembled most of the material for the book and composed a number

of pages. The inclusion of his "Friendly Daemon" makes this suspicion

not unlikely. And furthermore, certain anecdotes told in the first

section, particularly in the first eighty pages, are such stories as

would have appealed to Defoe's penchant for the uncanny, and might well

have been selected by him. The style is not different from that of

pieces known to be his.

But that the author of "Robinson Crusoe" would have told the "little

History" of the young woman without a fortune who obtains the husband

she desires by means of a magic cake (p. 86) is scarcely probable, for

the story is a sentimental tale that would have appealed to love-sick

Lydia Languishes. As far as we know, Defoe remained hard-headed to the

last. But Mrs. Haywood when she was not a scandal-monger, was a

sentimentalist. The story would have suited her temperament and the

tastes of her readers. It is told so much in her manner that one could

swear that the originator of the anecdote was _aut Eliza, aut diabola_.

A few pages further on (p. 104) appears the incident of a swaggerer who

enters the royal vault of Westminster Abbey at dead of night on a wager,

and having the tail of his coat twitched by the knife he has stuck in

the ground, is frightened into a faint--a story which Mrs. Haywood later

retold in different words in her "Female Spectator."[11] The "Secret

Memoirs" further informs us by a casual remark of Mr. Campbell's that

Eliza Haywood was well acquainted with the seer.

"Sometimes, when surrounded by my Friends, such as Anthony Hammond,

Esq; Mr. Philip Horneck, Mr. Philips, Mr.----, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs.

Fowk, Mrs. Eliza Haywood, and other celebrated Wits, of which my

House, for some Years has been the general Rendezvous, a good Bowl of

Punch before me, and the Glass going round in a constant Circle of

Mirth and Good Humour, I have, in a Moment, beheld Sights which has

froze my very Blood, and put me into Agonies that disordered the whole

Company" (p. 131).

The last anecdote in the first section is a repetition at some length of

the story of Campbell's adventures in Holland, not as related in Defoe's

"Life and Adventures," but according to the version in Mrs Haywood's

"Dumb Projector." The beginning, which has to do with a grave old

gentleman who was bit by a viper, is told in almost the same words;

indeed some letters that passed between the characters are identically

the same, and the end, though much abbreviated, contains a number of

sentences taken word for word from the earlier telling of the story.

Finally, Mrs. Haywood was the first and hitherto the only writer of the

Campbell pamphlets who had printed letters supposedly addressed to the

prophet by his clients. The device was peculiarly hers. The "Original

Letters sent to Mr. Campbel by his Consulters" in the "Secret Memoirs"

are similar to those already composed by her for "A Spy upon the

Conjurer." There is no reason to think that she did not invent the later

epistles as well as the former.

If, then, a number of anecdotes in the "Secret Memoirs" are suggestive

of Mrs. Haywood's known writings, and if one of them remained in her

memory thirteen years later; if the pamphlet carefully alludes to Eliza

Haywood as one of the dumb seer's particular friends, and if it repeats

in slightly different form her peculiar account of the dumb projector's

journey into Holland; and if, finally, the book contains a series of

letters to Campbell from fictitious correspondents fashioned on the last

already used by her, we may conclude that in all likelihood the

authoress whose name had previously been associated with Duncan Campbell

literature was again concerned in writing or revising this latest work.

At least a cautious critic can say that there is no inherent

improbability in the theory that Defoe with journalistic instinct,

thinking that Campbell's death in 1730 might stimulate public interest

in the wizard, had drafted in the rough the manuscript of a new

biography, but was prevented by the troubles of his last days from

completing it; that after his death the manuscript fell into the hands

of Mrs. Haywood, or perhaps was given to her by the publishers Millan

and Chrichley to finish; that she revised the material already written,

supplemented it with new and old matter of her own, composed a packet of

Original Letters, and sent the volume to press. The origin of the

"Appendix, by Way of Vindication of Mr. Duncan Campbel" remains unknown,

and any theory about the authorship of the "Secret Memoirs" must be

regarded in last analysis as largely conjectural.[11a]

Though the author of the original "Life and Adventures" has received

most of the credit due to Campbell's biographer, Mrs. Haywood, as we

have seen, was not less active in exploiting the deaf and dumb

gentleman. Her "Spy upon the Conjurer" was fubbed off upon the public as

often as Defoe's earlier volume, and neither writer could claim any

advantage over the other from his second and slighter contribution. Each

held successfully his own coign of vantage. Eliza Haywood, in

contemporary opinion, outranked Defoe almost as far as an interpreter of

the heart as he surpassed her in concocting an account of a new marvel

or a tale of strange adventure. The arbitress of the passions indeed

wrote nothing to compare in popularity with "Robinson Crusoe," but

before 1740 her "Love in Excess" ran through as many editions as "Moll

Flanders" and its abridgments, while "Idalia: or, the Unfortunate

Mistress" had been reprinted three times separately and twice with her

collected novels before a reissue of Defoe's "Fortunate Mistress" was

undertaken. When in 1740 Applebee published a new edition of "Roxana,"

he had it supplemented by "a continuation of nearly one hundred and

fifty pages, many of which are filled with rubbish about women named

Cleomira and Belinda."[12] Here again Mrs. Haywood's red herring crossed

the trail of Defoe, for oddly enough the sheets thus accurately

characterized were transcribed word for word from Eliza's second novel,

"The British Recluse." At the point where the heroine swallows a

sleeping potion supposing it poison, faints, and is thought to be dead,

the narrative breaks off abruptly with the words:

"Though the History of Cleomira and Belinda's Misfortunes, may be

thought foreign to my Affairs ... yet it is absolutely necessary I

should give it a Place, because it is the Source, or Spring, of many

strange and uncommon Scenes, which happened to me during the remaining

Part of my Life, and which I cannot give an Account of without"

...[13]

The pages which follow relate how Roxana became reconciled to her

daughter, died in peace, and was buried at Hornsey. The curious reader

finds, however, no further mention of Belinda and her friend. Evidently

Applebee's hack simply stole as much copy as he needed from an almost

forgotten book, trusting to receive his money before the fraud was

discovered. The volumes of Eliza Haywood were indeed a mine of emotional

scenes, and those who wished to read of warm desires or palpitating

passions had to turn to her romances or do without. Wretched as her work

seems in comparison to the modern novel, it was for the time being the

nearest approach to idealistic fiction and to the analysis of human

feelings. Defoe's romances of incident were the triumphant culmination

of the picaresque type; Mrs. Haywood's sentimental tales were in many

respects mere vague inchoations of a form as yet to be produced. But

when freed from the impurities of intrigue and from the taint of

scandal, the novel of heart interest became the dominant type of English

fiction. Unfortunately, however, Eliza Haywood was too practical a

writer to outrun her generation. The success of "A Spy upon the

Conjurer" may have convinced her that a ready market awaited stories of

amorous adventure and hinted libel. At any rate, she soon set out to

gratify the craving for books of that nature in a series of writings

which redounded little to her credit, though they brought her wide

notoriety.

FOOTNOTES

[1]

_Tatler_, No. 14; _Spectator_, Nos. 323, 474, 560.

[2]

Particularly the incongruous description of Duncan Campbell's first

appearance in London, where the writer finds the "heavenly youth" seated

like a young Adonis in the "center of an angelic tribe" of "the most

beautiful females that ever my eyes beheld," etc. G.A. Aitken's edition

of _The Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell_, 87-9.

[3]

_The Supernatural Philosopher_ ... by William Bond, of Bury St. Edmonds

[Transcriber's note: sic], Suffolk. The preface signed by Campbell to

Defoe's _Life and Adventures_ states that the book was revised by "a

young gentleman of my acquaintance." Professor Trent, however, includes

Mrs. Haywood with Bond as a possible assistant in the revision. See _The

Cambridge History of English Literature_, IX, 23.

[4]

Neither Defoe nor Mrs. Haywood contributed to the little budget of

miscellaneous matter prefixed to the second issue of the _Life and

Adventures_ (August, 1720) and sometimes found separately under the

title: _Mr. Campbell's Pacquet, for the Entertainment of Gentlemen and

Ladies. Containing I. Verses to Mr. Campbell, Occasioned by the History

of his Life and Adventures. By Mrs. Fowke, Mr. Philips, &c. II. The

Parallel, a Poem. Comparing the Poetical Productions of Mr. Pope, with

the Prophetical Predictions of Mr. Campbell. By Capt. Stanhope_, [i. e.

W. Bond.] _III. An Account of a most surprizing Apparition; sent from

Launceston in Cornwall. Attested by the Rev. Mr. Ruddie, Minister

there._ London: For T. Bickerton. 1720. See W. Lee, _Daniel Defoe_,

322-8.

[5]

_Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell_, 171.

[5a]

This volume was announced in the _British Journal_ as early as Dec. 15,

1722.

[6]

She or Bond may have inserted the passage to advertise a projected work.

Mr. Spectator had already remarked of the letters that came to his

office: "I know some Authors, who would pick up a _Secret History_ out

of such materials, and make a Bookseller an Alderman by the Copy." (No.

619.)

[7]

Defoe's _Life and Adventures_ is mentioned on pp. 17 (with a quotation),

61, 111, 246, 257.

[8]

Part II. Being a Collection of Letters found in Mr. Campbell's Closet.

By the Lady who wrote the foregoing sheets. Part III. Containing some

Letters from Persons of Mr. Campbell's more particular Acquaintance.

[9]

"The Pleasure with which you received my _Spy_ on the Conjurer,

encourages me to offer you a little Supplement to it, having since my

finishing that Book, had the opportunity of discovering something

concerning Mr. Campbell, which I believe your Lordship will allow to be

infinitely more surprizing than any Thing I have yet related." _The Dumb

Projector_, 5. Mr. G. A. Aitken, in his introduction to Defoe's _Life

and Adventures_, gives the two pieces unhesitatingly to Mrs. Haywood,

while other students of Defoe,--Leslie Stephen, Lee, Wright, and

Professor Trent,--are unanimous in their opinion that the first

exploiter of the dumb wizard could have had no hand in the writing of

these amplifications. The latest bibliographer of romances and tales,

Mr. Arundell Esdaile, however, follows the B.M. catalogue in listing

_The Dumb Projector_ under the convenient name of Defoe.

[10]

No. 125, Saturday. 23 November, 1728.

[11]

_The Female Spectator_, 1745, II, 246.

[11a]

In 1734 appeared a compilation of tables for computing Easter, etc.,

entitled _Time's Telescope Universal and Perpetual, Fitted for all

Countries and Capacities_ ... By _Duncan Campbell_. What connection, if

any, this book had with the fortune-teller or with any of the persons

connected with his biography appears not to have been determined.

[12]

G.A. Aitken, Introduction to _The Fortunate Mistress_, viii.

[13]

_The Fortunate Mistress; or, a History of the Life and Vast Variety of

Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau_.... London: Printed for E. Applebee.

1740. p. 359. Pp. 300-59 are taken from _The British Recluse_.