The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood Part 2

[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 t.i.tle-page, Mrs. Haywood has. .h.i.therto 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 a 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, _La.s.selia_ 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 _La.s.selia_ (1723), for instance, she feels obliged to defend herself from "that Aspersion which some of my own s.e.x 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 ent.i.tled _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_ l.u.s.tre, 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 s.e.x 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 Pa.s.sion. 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 s.e.x, 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 espiegleries facetieuses de Bigand_, (1730), and may have been done by Mrs. Haywood herself. The second t.i.tle 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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 Pa.s.sION

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 "Clelie" or "Cleopatre," 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. Sc.r.a.ps 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 Scudery, 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 _romancieres_, who had successfully invaded the field of prose fiction when the pa.s.sing of the precieuse fashion and Boileau's influential ridicule[1] had discredited the romance in the eyes of writers with cla.s.sical 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 pa.s.sion more lifelike than the heroic romances, and while they avoided the extravagances, they also shunned the voluminousness of the _romans a longue haleine_. So the stories related in "La Belle a.s.semblee" by Mme de Gomez, translated by Mrs. Haywood in 1725 and often reprinted, are nearer the model of Boccaccio's novelle than of the Scudery 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 t.i.tles 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-t.i.tle. 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.