The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood Part 12

Occasionally the advice to married women is very practical, as the following deterrent from gluttony shows:

"I dined one day with a lady, who the whole time she employ'd her knife and fork with incredible swiftness in dispatching a load of turkey and chine she had heap'd upon her plate, still kept a keen regard on what she had left behind, greedily devouring with her eyes all that remain'd in the dish, and throwing a look of envy on every one who put in for the smallest share.--My advice to such a one is, that she would have a great looking-gla.s.s fix'd opposite the seat she takes at table; and I am much mistaken, if the sight of herself in those grim att.i.tudes I have mention'd, will not very much contribute to bring her to more moderation" (p. 276).

The method of "The Husband, in Answer to the Wife" (1756) is similar to that of its companion-piece; in fact, much of the same advice is merely modified or amplified to suit the other s.e.x. The husband is warned to avoid drinking to excess and some other particulars which may happen to be displeasing to his spouse, such as using too much freedom in his wife's presence with any of her female acquaintance. He is instructed in the manner in which it will be most proper for a married man to carry himself towards the maidservants of his family, and also the manner of behavior best becoming a husband on a full detection of his wife's infidelity. As in "The Wife" the path of marriage leads but to divorce.

One is forcibly reminded of Hogarth's "Marriage a la Mode."

Not altogether different is the conception of wedlock in Mrs. Haywood's novels of domestic life written at about the same period, but the pictures there shown are painted in incomparably greater detail, with a fuller appreciation of character, and without that pious didacticism which even the most lively exertions of Eliza Haywood's romancing genius failed to leaven in her essays.

FOOTNOTES [1]

_Memoirs of a Certain Island_, I, 141. The letter is one of a packet conveyed away by Sylphs much resembling those in _The Rape of the Lock_.

[2]

Miss C.E. Morgan, _The Novel of Manners_, 72.

[3]

The author herself describes it in the Preface as "more properly ... a Paraphrase than a Translation."

[4]

Later _A Stage-Coach Journey to Exeter_, 1725.

[5]

A. Esdaile, _English Tales and Romances_, Introduction, x.x.xiii.

B.

[6]

Robert Boyle's _Martyrdom of Theodora_, 1687, is thus described by Dr.

Johnson. Boswell's _Johnson_, Oxford ed., I, 208.

[7]

Not to be confused with a periodical ent.i.tled _The Tea-Table. To be continued every Monday and Friday_. No. 1-36, 21 February to 22 June, 1724. B.M. (P.P. 5306).

[8]

_Ximene fearing to be forsaken by Palemon, desires he would kill her._ Quoted by Dyce, _Specimens of British Poetesses_, 1827, p. 186.

[9]

See _ante_, p. 24.

[10]

_Monthly Review_, XLVI, 463. April, 1772.

CHAPTER VII

LATER FICTION: THE DOMESTIC NOVEL

No such h.o.m.ogeneity as marked the works of Mrs. Haywood's first decade of authorship can be discovered in the productions of her last fifteen years. The vogue of the short romantic tale was then all but exhausted, her stock of scandal was no longer new, and accordingly she was obliged to grope her way toward fresh fields, even to the barren ground of the moral essay. But besides the letters, essays, and conduct books, and the anonymous pamphlets of doubtful character that may have occupied her pen during this period, she engaged in several experiments in legitimate prose fiction of various sorts, which have little in common except their more considerable length. Although the name of Mrs. Eliza Haywood was not displayed upon the t.i.tle-pages nor mentioned in the reviews of these novels, the authorship was not carefully concealed and was probably known to the curious. The t.i.tles of nearly all of them were mentioned by the "Biographia Dramatica" in the list of the novelist's meritorious works.

The earliest and the only one to bear the signature of Eliza Haywood at the end of the dedication was borrowed from the multifarious and unremarkable literary wares of Charles de Fieux, Chevalier de Mouhy.

"The Virtuous Villager, or Virgin's Victory: Being The Memoirs of a very Great Lady at the Court of France. Written by Herself. In which the Artifices of designing Men are fully detected and exposed; and the Calamities they bring on credulous believing Woman, are particularly related," was given to the English public in 1742 as a work suited to inculcate the principles of virtue, and probably owed its being to the previous success of "Pamela."[1] In the original a dull and spiritless imitation of Marivaux, the work was not improved by translation, and met naturally the reception due its slender merits. But along with the English versions of Le Sage, Marivaux, and the Abbe Prevost, "The Virtuous Villager" helped to accustom the readers of fiction to two volume novels and to pave the way for the numerous pages of Richardson.

Not more than a year from the time when the four duodecimos of "Pamela"

introduced kitchen morality into the polite world, the generosity of prominent men and women was directed toward a charity recently established after long agitation.[2] To furnish suitable decorations for the Foundling Hospital in Lamb's Conduit, Hogarth contributed the unsold lottery tickets for his "March to Finchley," and other well-known painters lent their services. Handel, a patron of the inst.i.tution, gave the organ it still possesses, and society followed the lead of the men of genius. The grounds of the Foundling Hospital became in Georgian days a "fashionable morning lounge." Writers of ephemeral literature were not slow to perceive how the wind lay and to take advantage of the interest aroused by the new foundation. The exposed infant, one of the oldest literary devices, was copiously revived, and during the decade when the Hospital was being constructed mention of foundlings on t.i.tle-pages became especially common. A pamphlet called "The Political Foundling"

was followed by the well-known "Foundling Hospital for Wit and Humour"

(1743), by Mrs. Haywood's "Fortunate Foundlings" (1744), by Moore's popular comedy, "The Foundling" (1748), and last and greatest by "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" (1749), not to mention "The Female Foundling" (1750).

Eliza Haywood's contribution to foundling literature relates the history of twins, brother and sister, found by a benevolent gentleman named Dorilaus in the memorable year 1688. Louisa is of the tribe of Marianne, Pamela, and Henrietta, nor do her experiences differ materially from the course usually run by such heroines. Reared a model of virtue, she is obliged to fly from the house of her guardian to avoid his importunities. After serving as a milliner's apprentice long enough to demonstrate the inviolability of her principles, she becomes mistress of the rules of politeness at the leading courts of Europe as the companion of the gay Melanthe. Saved from an atrocious rake by an honorable lover, whom she is unwilling to accept because of the humbleness of her station, she takes refuge in a convent where she soon becomes so popular that the abbess lays a plot to induce her to become a nun. But escaping the religious snare, she goes back to Paris to be claimed by Dorilaus as his real daughter. Thus every obstacle to her union with her lover is happily removed.

Horatio, meanwhile, after leaving Westminster School to serve as a volunteer in Flanders, has encountered fewer amorous and more military adventures than usually fell to the lot of Haywoodian heroes. His promising career under Marlborough is terminated when he is taken captive by the French, but he is subsequently released to enter the service of the Chevalier. He then becomes enamored of the beautiful Charlotta de Palfoy, and in the hope of making his fortune equal to hers, resolves to cast his lot with the Swedish monarch. In the Saxon campaign he wins a commission as colonel of horse and a comfortable share of the spoils, but later is taken prisoner by the Russians and condemned to languish in a dungeon at St. Petersburg. After many hardships he makes his way to Paris to be welcomed as a son by Dorilaus and as a husband by his adored Charlotta.

In describing Horatio's martial exploits Mrs. Haywood may well have learned some lessons from the "Memoirs of a Cavalier." The narrative is direct and rapid, and diversified by the mingling of private escapades with history. Too much is made, of course, of the hero's personal relations with Charles XII, but that is a fault which few historical novelists have known how to avoid. The geographical background, as well as the historical setting, is laid out with a precision unusual in her fiction. The whole map of Europe is the scene of action, and the author speaks as one familiar with foreign travel, though her pa.s.sing references to Paris, Venice, Vienna, and other cities have not the full vigor of the descriptions in "Peregrine Pickle."

From the standpoint of structure, too, "The Fortunate Foundlings" is an improvement over the haphazard plots of Mrs. Haywood's early romances, though the double-barreled story necessitated by twin hero and heroine could hardly be told without awkward interruptions in the sequence of one part of the narrative in order to forward the other. But the author doubtless felt that the reader's interest would be freshened by turning from the amorous adventures of Louisa to the daring deeds of Horatio, while a protagonist of each s.e.x enabled her to exhibit at once examples of both male and female virtue. And in spite of inherent difficulties, she succeeded to some extent in showing an interrelation of plots, as where Dorilaus by going to the north of Ireland to hear the dying confession of the mother of his children, thereby misses Horatio's appeal for a ransom, and thus prevents him from rejoining Marlborough's standard. But there is nothing like Fielding's ingenious linking of events and careful preparation for the catastrophe, nor did Mrs. Haywood make much out of the hint of unconscious incest and the foundling motif which her book has in common with "Tom Jones." Occasionally also she cannot refrain from inserting a bit of court gossip or an amorous page in her warmest manner, but the number of intercalated stories is small indeed compared to that in a romance like "Love in Excess," and they are usually dismissed in a few paragraphs. Here for the first time the author has shown some ability to subordinate sensational incident to the needs of the main plot.

When Mrs. Haywood's inclination or necessities led her back to the novel four years later, she produced a work upon a still more consistent, if also more artificial plan than any of her previous attempts. "Life's Progress through the Pa.s.sions: or, the Adventures of Natura" avowedly aims to trace the workings of human emotion. The author's purpose is to examine in "what manner the pa.s.sions operate in every stage of life, and how far the const.i.tution of the _outward frame_ is concerned in the emotions of the _internal faculties_," for actions which we might admire or abhor "would lose much of their _eclat_ either way, were the secret springs that give them motion, seen into with the eyes of philosophy and reflection." Natura, a sort of Everyman exposed to the variations of pa.s.sion, is not the faultless hero of romance, but a mere ordinary mortal. Indeed, the writer declares that she is "an enemy to all _romances, novels_, and whatever carries the air of them ... and as it is a _real_, not _fict.i.tious_ character I am about to present, I think myself obliged ... to draw him such as he was, not such as some sanguine imaginations might wish him to have been."

The survey of the pa.s.sions begins with an account of Natura's birth of well-to-do but not extraordinary parents, his mother's death, and his father's second marriage, his attack of the small-pox, his education at Eton, and his boyish love for his little play-mate, Delia. Later he becomes more seriously compromised with a woman of the streets, who lures him into financial engagements. Though locked up by his displeased father, he manages to escape, finds his lady entertaining another gallant, and in despair becomes a regular vagabond. Just as he is about to leave England, his father discovers him and sends him to make the grand tour under a competent tutor.

In Paris the tutor dies, and the young man is left to the exercise of his own discretion. Benighted in a wood, he finds shelter in a monastery of n.o.ble ladies, where both the abbess and her sister fall in love with him. After fluctuating between the two, he tries to elope with the sister, is foiled by the abbess, and sets off again upon his travels. In Italy he hears of his father's difficulties and starts for home, but enters the French service instead. He is involved with a n.o.bleman in an attempt to abduct a lady from a nunnery, and would have been tortured had not the jailor's wife eloped with him to England. There he enters Parliament and is about to contract a fortunate marriage when he incautiously defends the Chevalier in conversation, fights a duel, and, although his antagonist is only wounded, he finds his reputation blighted by the stigma of Jacobitism. After a long illness at Vienna where he is pestered by Catholic priests, he recovers his health at Spa, and falls in love with a young English girl. Her parents gladly give their consent, but Maria seems unaccountably averse to the match. And when our hero is a.s.saulted by a jealous footman, he perceives that the lady has fixed her affections on a lower object. Natura on his return to England prospers and marries happily, but his joy is soon destroyed by the death of his father and of his wife in giving birth to a son.

Consumed by ambition, the widower then marries the niece of a statesman, only to discover what misery there is in a luxurious and unvirtuous wife.

Natura soon experiences the pa.s.sions of melancholy, grief, and revenge.

His son dies, and his wife's conduct forces him to divorce her. In the hope of preventing his brother from inheriting his estate he is about to marry a healthy country girl when he hears that his brother is dead and that his sister's son is now his heir. Thereupon he buys off his intended bride. At his sister's house he meets a young matron named Charlotte, for whom he long entertains a platonic affection, but finally marries her and has three sons. Thereafter he sinks into a calm and natural decline and dies in his sixty-third year.

"Thus I have attempted to trace nature in all her mazy windings, and shew life's progress through the pa.s.sions, from the cradle to the grave.--The various adventures which happened to Natura, I thought, afforded a more ample field, than those of any one man I ever heard, or read of; and flatter myself, that the reader will find many instances, that may contribute to rectify his own conduct, by pointing out those things which ought to be avoided, or at least most carefully guarded against, and those which are worthy to be improved and imitated."

The obvious and conventional moral ending and the shreds of romance that still adhere to the story need not blind us to its unusual features.

Besides insisting upon the necessity for psychological a.n.a.lysis of a sort, the author here for the first time becomes a genuine novelist in the sense that her confessed purpose is to depict the actual conditions of life, not to glorify or idealize them. As Fielding was to do in "Tom Jones," Mrs. Haywood proclaims the mediocrity of her hero as his most remarkable quality. Had she been able to make him more than a lay figure distorted by various pa.s.sions, she might have produced a real character.

Although at times he seems to be in danger of acquiring the romantic faculty of causing every woman he meets to fall in love with him, yet the glamor of his youth is obscured by a peaceful and ordinary old age.

Artificial in design and stilted in execution as the work is, it nevertheless marks Eliza Haywood's emanc.i.p.ation from the traditions of the romance.[3]

In "The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless" (1751) she reached the full fruition of her powers as a novelist. Her heroine, like Natura, is little more than a "humour" character, whose prevailing fault is denoted by her surname.[4] Though not fundamentally vicious, her heedless vanity, inquisitiveness, and vivacity lead her into all sorts of follies and embarra.s.sments upon her first entry into fashionable life in London.

Among all the suitors who strive to make an impression upon her heart Mr. Trueworth alone succeeds, but her levity and her disregard of appearances force him to think her unworthy of his attentions. Meanwhile her guardian's wife, Lady Mellasin, has been turned out of the house for an egregious infidelity, and Betsy is left to her own scant discretion.

After somewhat annoying her brothers by receiving men at her lodgings, she elects under family pressure to marry a Mr. Munden, who quickly shows himself all that a husband should not be. Eventually she has to abandon him, but demonstrates her wifely devotion by going back to nurse him through his last illness. Mr. Trueworth's mate in the interim has conveniently managed to succ.u.mb, his old pa.s.sion revives, and exactly upon the anniversary of Mr. Munden's death he arrives in a chariot and six to claim the fair widow, whose youthful levity has been chastened by the severe discipline of her unfortunate marriage. Told in an easy and dilatory style and interspersed with the inevitable little histories and impa.s.sioned letters, the story attained the conventional bulk of four duodecimo volumes.

As Mr. Austin Dobson has pointed out,[5] Mrs. Haywood's novel is remarkable for its scant allusions to actual places and persons. Once mention is made of an appointment "at General Tatten's bench, opposite Rosamond's pond, in St. James's Park," and once a character refers to Cuper's Gardens, but except for an outburst of unexplained virulence directed against Fielding,[6] there is hardly a thought of the novelist's contemporaries. Here is a change indeed from the method of the _chronique scandaleuse_, and a restraint to be wondered at when we remember the worthies caricatured by so eminent a writer as Smollett.

But even more remarkable is the difference of spirit between "Betsy Thoughtless" and Mrs. Haywood's earlier and briefer romances. The young _romanciere_ who in 1725 could write, "Love is a Topick which I believe few are ignorant of ... a shady Grove and purling Stream are all Things that's necessary to give us an Idea of the tender Pa.s.sion,"[7] had in a quarter of a century learned much worldly wisdom, and her heroine likewise is too sophisticated to be moved by the style of love-making that warmed the susceptible bosoms of Anadea, Filenia, or Placentia. One of Betsy's suitors, indeed, ventured upon the romantic vein with no very favorable results.

"'The deity of soft desires,' said he, 'flies the confused glare of pomp and public shews;--'tis in the shady bowers, or on the banks of a sweet purling stream, he spreads his downy wings, and wafts his thousand nameless pleasures on the fond--the innocent and the happy pair.'

"He was going on, but she interrupted him with a loud laugh. 'Hold, hold,' cried she; 'was there ever such a romantick description? I wonder how such silly ideas come into your head--"shady bowers! and purling streams!"--Heavens, how insipid! Well' (continued she), 'you may be the Strephon of the woods, if you think fit; but I shall never envy the happiness of the Chloe that accompanies you in these fine recesses. What! to be cooped up like a tame dove, only to coo, and bill, and breed? O, it would be a delicious life, indeed!'"[8]

Thus completely metamorphosed were the heroines of Mrs. Haywood's maturest fiction. Betsy Thoughtless is not even the innocent, lovely, and pliable girl typified in Fielding's Sophia Western. She is eminently hard-headed, inquisitive, and practical, and is justly described by Sir Walter Raleigh as "own cousin to Roderick Random."[9]

Whether she may be considered also the ancestor of Evelina must briefly be considered. Dunlop, who apparently originated the idea that "Betsy Thoughtless" might have suggested the plan of Miss Burney's novel, worked out an elaborate parallel between the plots and some of the chief characters of the two compositions.[10] Both, as he pointed out, begin with the launching of a young girl on the great and busy stage of life in London. Each heroine has much to endure from the vulgar manners of a Lady Mellasin or a Madam Duval, and each is annoyed by the malice and impertinence of a Miss Flora or the Misses Branghton. Through their inexperience in the manners of the world and their heedlessness or ignorance of ceremony both young ladies are mortified by falling into embarra.s.sing and awkward predicaments. Both in the same way alarm the delicacy and almost alienate the affections of their chosen lovers. "The chief perplexity of Mr. Trueworth, the admirer of Miss Thoughtless, arose from meeting her in company with Miss Forward, who had been her companion at a boarding-school, and of whose infamous character she was ignorant. In like manner the delicacy of Lord Orville is wounded, and his attachment shaken, by meeting his Evelina in similar society at Vauxhall. The subsequent visit and counsel of the lovers to their mistresses is seen, however, in a very different point of view by the heroines." The likeness between the plots of the two novels is indeed sufficiently striking to attract the attention of an experienced hunter for literary parallels, but unfortunately there is no external evidence to show that Miss Burney ever read her predecessor's work. One need only compare any two parallel characters, the common profligate, Lady Mellasin, for instance, with the delightfully coa.r.s.e Madam Duval, to see how little the author of "Evelina" could have learned from the pages of Mrs. Haywood.

But if it deserves scant credit as a model for Miss Burney's infinitely more delicate art, "Betsy Thoughtless" should still be noticed as an early attempt to use the substance of everyday life as material for fiction. It has been called with some justice the first domestic novel in the language. Although the exact definition of a domestic novel nowhere appears, the term may be understood--by expanding the French _roman a la ta.s.se de the_--as meaning a realistic piece of fiction in which the heroine serves as chief protagonist, and which can be read with a teacup in one hand without danger of spilling the tea. Mrs.