Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela Part 1

Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela.

by Samuel Richardson.

INTRODUCTION

Since most publishers of _Pamela_ have preferred to print Richardson's table of contents from the sixth edition, his complete introduction (his preface, together with letters to the editor and comments) is missing even from some of our best collections.

Occasionally one finds the preface and the first two letters, but only four publishers since Richardson have attempted to reprint the full introduction. Harrison (London, 1785) -- who omits the first letter -- and Cooke (London, 1802-3) both follow Richardson's eighth edition; Ballantyne (Edinburgh, 1824) uses the fourth; the Shakespeare Head (Oxford, 1929), the third. And even these printings leave one dissatisfied. The Shakespeare Head gives the fullest text, but naturally omits Richardson's revisions; Cooke gives the introduction in its final form, but one misses the full text which accompanied the book in its heyday; and rarely are both Cooke and Shakespeare Head to be found in the same library.

Richardson's complete introduction gains importance when we note that he retained and revised it through seven of his eight editions of _Pamela_.

To see the text and follow Richardson's changes is to get an unusually intimate view of his att.i.tude toward his book, of his concessions and tenacities, of Richardson the anonymous "editor" who could not keep the author's laurels completely under his hat.

This present reprint, therefore, intends to give the fullest text of Richardson's introduction, and to indicate his changes. The text is that of the second edition, reproduced with permission of the Huntington Library. Brackets, added to this lithoprint, show Richardson's princ.i.p.al corrections: "4th" means that the bracketed lines were deleted in the fourth and all subsequent editions; "4th, change 6" means that in the fourth and subsequent editions the bracketed lines were changed to the reading listed here as number six. Several changes within deleted pa.s.sages are discussed but not marked on the text.

Richardson's own editions of _Pamela_ appeared as follows: (1) November 6, 1740, (2) February 14, 1741, (3) March 12, 1741, (4) May 5, 1741, (5) September 22, 1741, (6) May 10, 1742, (7) 1754, (8) October 28, 1761[1] (three months after Richardson's death). The first edition prints Richardson's preface and two complimentary letters. To these the "Introduction to this Second Edition" adds twenty-four pages of letters and comment and the third edition makes no changes in the introduction whatsoever, even retaining "this Second Edition,"[2] The fourth makes some changes, and the fifth, considerably more. The sixth, a handsome quarto in a row of duodecimos, abandons the introductory letters; the seventh follows the fifth, and the eight makes some major cuts.

Notwithstanding Richardson's freedom in editing these letters -- and Fielding's insinuation in _Shamela_ that they were Richardson's own copy -- he wrote none of them. Jean Baptiste de Freval, a Frenchman living in London, for whom Richardson was printing a book,[3] wrote the first. The second probably came from William Webster, clergyman and editor of _The Weekly Miscellany_, wherein the letter had appeared as an advertis.e.m.e.nt, the first public reference to _Pamela_, on October 11, 1740.[4] Webster owed (an obligation eventually forgiven) "a debt of 140 _l._ to my most worthy Friend, Mr. _Richardson_, the _Printer_,"[5] and Richardson reprints the letter using Webster's phrase: "To my worthy Friend, the Editor of _Pamela_." These first two letters, de Freval's and Webster's, respond to an author's request for criticism. The rest, new with the second edition, are unsolicited.

All of these are the work of Aaron Hill, excepting only the anonymous letter which Richardson summarizes, beginning on page xxi[6] -- sent to Richardson in care of Charles Rivington, co-publisher of _Pamela_, on November 15, 1740, the first gratuitous response to Richardson's book.

To advertis.e.m.e.nts in _The Daily Gazeteer_ (November 20) and _The London Evening-Post_ (December 11-13), Richardson added a note:

An anonymous Letter relating to this Piece is come to the Editor's Hand, who takes this Opportunity (having no better) most heartily to thank the Gentleman for his candid and judicious Observations; and to beg Favour of a further Correspondence with him, under what Restrictions he pleases. Instruction, and not Curiosity, being sincerely the Motive for this request.[7]

If the gentleman had answered, the introduction to _Pamela_ would perhaps have been shorter. Some of Hill's acerbity may have been absorbed from Richardson, hurt by the writer's silence.

The double-entendres mentioned on page xxii are given in the gentleman's unpublished letter in the Forster collection, in the Victoria and Albert Museum:

Jokes are often more Severe, and do more Mischief, than more Solid Objects -- to obviate some, why not omit P 175 -- _betwixt Fear and Delight_ -- and P 181 -- _I made shift to eat a bit of_ etc. _but I had no Appet.i.te to any thing else_.[8]

In the light of this letter, the second edition of _Pamela_ attests a curious fact: while Hill pontificates in the introduction about ignoring such vulgarity of mind, Richardson has tiptoed back to Volume Two and changed the questioned pa.s.sages. From the second edition forward, Pamela trembles during her wedding not "betwixt Fear and Delight" but "betwixt Fear and Joy"; and although Richardson leaves Pamela her shift on page 181, he changes her remark about appet.i.te: "I made shift to get down a bit of Apple-pie, and a little Custard; but that was all." By omitting the specific objections from his summary, Richardson managed at one stroke to save his righteousness in the introduction and his face in the text.

Hill's authorship of the introductory letters is easily established.

Anna Laet.i.tia Barbauld includes Hill's signature with a reduced version of the one which here begins on page xvi (December 17, 1740).[9]

Thereafter, Richardson's italicized remarks, two of them added in later editions, provide the links: "_Abstract of a second Letter from the same Gentleman_," etc.

With wonderful indirection, Richardson had sent a copy of _Pamela_ to Hill's daughters, along with some other books, and, as Hill writes Mallet, "without the smallest _hint_, that it was _his_, and with a grave apology, as for a _trifle_, of too light a species."[10] Hill thanked Richardson in the letter of December 17, 1740. Hill asks who on earth the author might be, hinting, the while, by returning Richardson's own phrase, that he understands that it is Richardson himself: "this _Trifle_ (for such, I dare answer for the _Author_, His Modesty misguides him to think it)." Though Hill tells Mallet that Richardson was "very loth ... a long time, to confess it," Richardson did not dally long. By December 29, 1740, he has confirmed Hill's guess. On that date Hill writes:

Acquainted with the amiable goodness of your heart, I can foresee the pleasure it will give you, to have given another pleasure: and you heap it on me in the n.o.blest manner, by the joy you make me feel, at finding _Pamela's_ incomparable author is the person I not only hop'd to hear was so, but whom I should have been quite griev'd, disturb'd, and mortified, not to have really found so.

Yet, I confess, till I began to read, I had not the least notion of it. But I presently took notice, that whatever _Pamela_ thought, said, or did, was all transfusion of your own fine spirit. And as I know not if there lives another writer, who could furnish her with such a sapid sweetness as she fills the table with, I could not therefor chuse but name _you_ to my hope, as moulder of this maiden model.[11]

Mrs. Barbauld omits this letter but prints another from Hill to Richardson, not to be found now in the Forster collection, bearing the same date -- December 29, 1740 (I, 56ff.). This letter furnishes the "_delightful Story, so admirably related_" beginning on page x.x.xi. From the second paragraph on ("We have a lively little Boy in the Family"), the _Pamela_ text is substantially the same as Barbauld's. But the first paragraph Richardson has contrived to suit his editorial fiction.

The delightful story so gratified Mr. Richardson that he sent lively little Harry Campbell ("the dear amiable boy") two books, an event almost enough to finish him:

Out burst a hundred _O Lords!_ in a torrent of voice rendered hoa.r.s.e and half choaked by his pa.s.sions. He clasped his trembling fingers together; and his hands were strained hard, and held writhing. His elbows were extended to the height of his shoulders, and his eyes, all inflamed with delight, turned incessantly round from one side, and one friend, to the other, scattering his triumphant ideas among us. His fairy-face (ears and all) was flushed as red as his lips; and his flying feet told his joy to the floor, in a wild and stamping impatience of grat.i.tude.[12]

The only other part of the introduction to _Pamela_ elsewhere in print is the concluding poem. This, too, is Hill's, printed in _The Weekly Miscellany_, February 28, 1741, along with his December 17 letter, and collected with Hill's _Works_ (III, 348-350). This is the poem, it would seem, of which Hill boasts that he has given "Pamela" a short "e" as Richardson intended, a.s.serting that "Mr. Pope has taught half the women in England to p.r.o.nounce it wrong."[13] Pope in his _Epistle to Miss Blount_ (line 49), had made the "e" long:

The G.o.ds, to curse Pamela with her prayers, Gave the gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares, The shining robes, rich jewels, beds of state, And, to complete her bliss, a fool for mate.

Hill's lines are somewhat less successful. He dedicated them to "the Unknown Author of _Pamela_" two months after Richardson had confessed his authorship.

Richardson changes one line in the poem. In Hill's _Works_ it reads: "Whence _public wealth_ derives its vital course." Richardson, a more modern man perhaps, reads "_public Health_." His emendation, however, improves Hill's metaphor concerning a blaze which is a pilot pointing out the source of public wealth, which is drunk to prevent gangrene from blackening to the bone. Further reflection led Richardson a year later to change "vital" to "moral."

Throughout the letters in his introduction, Richardson made changes, all largely stylistic. That Richardson removed the letters from the front of his book in response to criticism -- as Cross[14] and others have a.s.serted -- is not quite accurate. He removed them from the sixth edition, but put them back in the seventh and eighth; and his alterations show him giving in to criticism only by inches, if indeed his changes to his introduction are not more simply those of any author tr.i.m.m.i.n.g (and with Richardson, ever so little) his early extravagances.

Richardson's stubbornness here suggests other reasons for his subst.i.tuting a table of contents for his introduction in the sixth edition. To print both would have been too prolix, even for Richardson; and it seems that the table of contents, detailing the entire action, together with the change to big quarto volumes, are Richardson's efforts to authenticate _Pamela_ in the face of Chandler's and Kelly's unauthorized sequel, _Pamela's Conduct in High Life_, printed to complete the two duodecimo volumes of Richardson's original story.

Richardson's sixth edition is the first in which his own additional two volumes, written to forestall Chandler and Kelly, are included with the first two as a complete four-volume unit. Twelve years later, in 1754, his true _Pamela_ established, he reverted to his introductory letters.

Hill's death in 1750 may also have moved Richardson to restore the introduction which was chiefly Hill's work, recalling both his friend and _Pamela's_ greener days. In the eighth edition, at the end of his life, Richardson still kept the introductory letters, though with some final constrictions.

Richardson makes the first changes to his introduction in the fourth edition. Excepting minor clarifications, all deal with Hill's answer to the anonymous gentleman. The att.i.tude toward this gentleman has softened. The "rashest of All his Advices" becomes merely the "least weigh'd" of his judgments, and his blindness becomes oversight. He is no longer pedantic; he no longer makes vulgar allusions, but only fears that they might be made.

In the fifth edition, Richardson seems chiefly concerned with redundancy, but he also diminishes some of the praise. In deference to the gentleman, it would seem, Richardson deletes his flattery of Hill on pages xxix and x.x.xi, and "_some of the most beautiful Letters that have been written in any Language_" become simply "_Letters_." Perhaps Richardson's conscience was bothering him. Perhaps he had heard from his anonymous correspondent after all: he now identifies the gentleman's remarks as coming "_in a Letter from the Country_." Unless pure fancy, this is new information, for the letter, now in the Forster collection, in no way indicates its place of origin. Richardson's seeking of the gentleman through advertis.e.m.e.nt in London newspapers suggests that he thought of his correspondent as a city man.

In the fifth edition one detects a certain discomfort with the false editorship and the praise Richardson permits himself with it. His direct response to criticism is slight. He deletes "_from_ low _to_ high _Life_," since _Pamela's Conduct in High Life_ had appeared four months previous. From the pa.s.sages which Fielding ridicules in _Shamela_, he drops no more than "wonderful" from before "AUTHOR of _Pamela_." In the pa.s.sage introducing the new letters (page xv) Richardson now apologizes.

The Author, he implies, wanted the praises omitted, but much to his sorrow the Editor could not disentangle them from the "critical remarks." The author's modesty, however, remains in the realm of possibility only.

Where self-praise is strong a vague uneasiness sets Richardson to work on the style, unable to locate the center of his trouble. On page v "_strongly interest them in the edifying Story_" becomes "_attach their regard to the Story,_" but this is barely to nibble at his phrase "_so probable, so natural, so lively_" just preceding, which perished in the eighth edition.

Similarly, he attempts to cure the last paragraph of his preface through minor incisions. He drops the parenthesis about the "_great Variety of entertaining Incidents_", and he diminishes "_these engaging Scenes_" to "_it_". But the paragraph is still too much for him. In the eighth edition he cuts all but the outlines of his editor-author pretext.

The seventh edition does no more than sharpen punctuation. The eighth in general continues to trim little excesses, though the loss is scarcely noticeable. Richardson further reduces Hill's praise of the book and his own praise of Hill, feeling his way toward a detached view of his book, looking to posterity. Since _Pamela_ has fulfilled the prediction of foreign renown made by his French friend, de Freval, Richardson now omits de Freval's obliging treachery to the literature of France (page ix). Since the "delightful story" is anecdotal and not critical, it too disappears. Other changes simply testify an author's attention to his style, uninhibited by the fact that the style is indeed not his. He deletes a senseless remark about masculine flexibility. He removes "Nature" from the foundation of the narrative (t.i.tle page and page v, though left on page viii) probably to avoid implying that Nature is in the foundation only.

From the first, Richardson's disguise as editor is little more than half-hearted. Its purpose was at first partly commercial, permitting advertising in the preface. Four ladies urged him on, so, Richardson confesses, he "struck a bold stroke in the preface... having the umbrage of the editor's character to screen [him] self behind."[15] But the author nevertheless threw rather distinct shadows on the screen. His preface speaks of the book altogether as a work of fiction: the editor has "set forth" social duties; he has "painted" vice and virtue, "drawn"

characters, "raised," "taught," "effected," and "embellished with a great variety of entertaining incidents." Yet, suddenly, the editor also seems to have done nothing more than to have "perused these engaging scenes," written a preface, and gotten them into print.

Richardson cannot quite give the imaginary author substance. "These sheets" have accomplished all the wonders claimed for them, not "the author of these sheets." Richardson speaks not of _the_ author, but of _an_ author, of authors in general. The implication hangs over the preface, and is strengthened by de Freval's letter, that the editor himself has worked up the story from the barest details of real life (which is, of course, what Richardson did). De Freval continues to speak of the work entirely as of creative writing. The epistolary style is aptly devised; the book will become a pattern for this kind of fiction; it is contrived for readers of all tastes. But, quite in contradiction, de Freval also implies that the editor has shown him the author's original work, together with certain editorial changes necessary to protect the real Pamela and Mr. B.

The second letter, presumably Webster's, toys with the suggestion that a young woman actually wrote the letters which Richardson edits: "let us have _Pamela_ as _Pamela_ wrote it." But this is only in play. Although the writer disparages "_Novels_," the note which heads his letter when it first appeared in _The Weekly Miscellany_ speaks of the "Author of Pamela" who has "written an _English Novel_,"[16] and his opening remarks are clearly those of a critic speaking of fiction.

Hill's first letter goes solidly for the conclusion that an author, a man of genius, wrote the book. The heading, "To the Editor of _Pamela_", is Richardson's only attempt to bring Hill's letter into his already wavering line. In the fifth edition, however, he introduces this letter with his only straight statement that an author, distinct from the editor, is involved, an author who begged the editor not to include flattery.

To the end of his days Richardson continued to sit under the editorial shade -- _Sir Charles Grandison_ was "published" by the "editor of _Pamela_ and _Clarissa_" -- enjoying the sunshine of his authorship.

His introduction to _Pamela_ and the care he took with it suggest more succinctly than anything else Richardson's flirtation with his adorers, which is not at all unlike that of his so modest heroine.

Sheridan W. Baker, Jr.

University of Michigan

[Footnote 1: William M. Sale, _Samuel Richardson, a Bibliographical Record_ (New Haven, 1936), p. 13.]

[Footnote 2: The fourth carries "the Second Edition" before the new introductory letters; the fifth changes to "the Present Edition."]

[Footnote 3: A translation of Abbe Noel Antoine Pluche: _The History of the Heavens_, 2 vols. (1740). (William M. Sale, _Samuel Richardson: Master Printer_ [Cornell, 1950], p. 193.)]

[Footnote 4: William M. Sale, _Samuel Richardson, a Bibliographical Record_, p. 15; William M. and Alan D. McKillop, _Samuel Richardson_ (Chapel Hill, 1936), p. 42.]