Part 11 (1/2)
_Philobillon Soc. Misc._, IV, 12. ”Clio must be allowed to be a most complete poetess, if she really wrote those poems that bear her name; but it has of late been so abused and scandalized, that I am informed she has lately changed it for that of Myra.” Quoted from the _British Journal_, 24 September, 1726. I am indebted to Miss Dorothy Brewster's _Aaron Hill_, 189, for this reference.
[20]
See Clara Reeve, _The Progress of Romance_ (1785), I, 121.
[I have re-arranged the pa.s.sage for the sake of brevity.]
”_Soph._ I have heard it often said that Mr. Pope was too severe in his treatment of this lady: it was supposed that she had given some private offence, which he resented publicly, as was too much his way.
”_Euph._ Mr. Pope was severe in his castigations, but let us be just to merit of every kind. Mrs. _Heywood_ had the singular good fortune to recover a lost reputation and the yet greater honour to atone for her errors.--She devoted the remainder of her life and labours to the service of virtue.... Those works by which she is most likely to be known to posterity, are the _Female Spectator_, and the _Invisible Spy_....”
CHAPTER VI
LETTERS AND ESSAYS
The works of Mrs. Haywood's maturity most renowned for their pious intent were not of the tribe of novels, but rather in the shape of letters or periodical essays such as ”Epistles for the Ladies” (1749) and ”The Female Spectator” (1746). Each of these forms, as practiced during the eighteenth century, permitted the introduction of short romantic stories either for the purpose of ill.u.s.trating a moral or to make the didacticism more palatable. Even as a votary of virtue Eliza did not neglect to mingle a liberal portion of _dulce_ with her _utile_; indeed in the first of the productions mentioned she manifested an occasional tendency to revert to the letter of amorous intrigue characteristic of her earlier efforts. In her latest and soberest writings, the conduct books called ”The Wife” and ”The Husband” (1756), she frequently yielded to the temptation to turn from dry precept to picturing the foibles of either s.e.x. Her long training in the school of romance had made gallantry the natural object of Eliza Haywood's thoughts.
During the time that she was incessantly occupied with short tales of pa.s.sion she had experimented in both the letter and the essay form, using the former especially as an adjunct to her stories. One of her first attempts, also, to find her proper vein as an author was a translation from the French of the ”Letters from a Lady of Quality to a Chevalier,” with a ”Discourse concerning Writings of this Nature, by Way of Essay” for which the translator was responsible. In ”The Tea-Table”
(1725), which never advanced beyond the second part, and ”Reflections on the Various Effects of Love” (1726) the then well-known novelist returned to the essay form, and a comprehensive volume of ”Love-Letters on All Occasions” (1730) closed the first period of her literary activity. But none of these departures was noticeably different in tone from her staple romances.
The sweets of love were perhaps most convincingly revealed in the amorous billets of which ”Love in Excess” and many of Eliza's subsequent pieces of fiction contained a plentiful supply. Letters languis.h.i.+ng with various degrees of desire or burning with jealous rage were introduced into the story upon any pretext. Writing them was evidently the author's forte, and perusing them apparently a pleasure to her readers, for they remained a conspicuous part of Mrs. Haywood's sentimental paraphernalia.
As in the French romances of the Scudery type the missives were quoted at length and labeled with such headings as, ”The Despairing D'Elmont to his Repenting Charmer,” or ”To the never enough Admir'd Count D'Elmont,”
and signed with some such formula as, ”Your most pa.s.sionate and tender, but ('till she receives a favorable Answer) your unknown Adorer.” The custom of inserting letters in the course of the story was, as has already been indicated, a heritage from the times of Gomberville, La Calprenede, and the Scuderys when miscellaneous material of all sorts from poetry to prosy conversations was habitually used to diversify the narrative. Mrs. Haywood, however, employed the letter not to ornament but to intensify. Her _billets-doux_ like the lyrics in a play represent moments of supreme emotion. In seeking vividness she too often fell into exaggeration, as in the following specimen of absolute pa.s.sion.
”Torture--Distraction--h.e.l.l--what will become of me--I cannot--I will not survive the Knowledge that you are mine no more--Yet this Suspence is worse than all yet ever bore the Name of Horror--Let me not linger in it, if you have Humanity--declare my Doom at once--be kind in Cruelty at least, and let one Death conclude the thousand, thousand Deaths which every Minute of Uncertainty brings with it, to
The Miserable, but Still Adoring Melantha.
P.S. I have order'd the Messenger to bring an Answer; if he comes without, depend I will murder him, and then myself.”[1]
Such remnants of the romantic tradition as the verses on ”The Unfortunate Camilla's Complaint to the Moon, for the Absence of her dear Henricus Frankville” in ”Love in Excess” were soon discarded, but the letters, though they enc.u.mbered the progress of the narrative, made it more realistic by giving an opportunity for the display of pa.s.sion at first hand. Their continued vogue was undoubtedly due in large measure to the popularity of the celebrated ”Letters of a Portuguese Nun”
(1669), which, with a note of sincerity till then unknown, aided the return to naturalness.[2]
The ”Lettres Nouvelles de Monsieur Boursault ... Avec Treize Lettres Amoureuses d'une Dame a un Cavalier,” loosely translated by Mrs. Haywood as ”Letters from a Lady of Quality to a Chevalier” (1721),[3] was one of the numerous imitations of the Portuguese Letters. Like most of the other imitations it echoed the mannerisms rather than the fervor of its original. The lady's epistles do not reveal a story, but describe in detail the doubts, disappointments, fears, jealousies, and raptures of a married woman for a lover who in the last three letters has left France for England. Except for this remove there is no change in the situation of the characters. The lover apparently remains constant to the end. The reader is even left in some doubt as to the exact nature of their relations.h.i.+p. The lady at one time calls it a ”criminal Conversation,”
but later resents an attempt upon her honor, and seems generally to believe that ”a distant Conversation, if it is less sweet, will be, not only more pure, but also more durable.”
But perhaps it is only fair to let the author speak for herself.
”The Lady, whose Letters I have taken the liberty to translate, tho she has been cautious enough in expressing any thing (even in those the most tender among them) which can give the Reader an a.s.surance she had forfeited her Virtue; yet there is not one, but what sufficiently proves how impossible it is to maintain such a Correspondence, without an Anxiety and continual Perturbation of Mind, which I think a Woman must have bid farewell to her Understanding, before she could resolve to endure.
”In the very first she plainly discovers the Agitation of her Spirits, confesses she knows herself in the wrong, and that every Expression her Tenderness forces from her, is a Stab to her Peace; she dreads the Effects of her Lover's too powerful Attractions, doubts her own Strength of resisting such united Charms as she finds in him, and trembles at the Apprehensions, that by some unlucky Accident the Secret should be known. Every thing alarms her ... 'Tis impossible to be conscious of any thing we wish to conceal, without suspecting the most undesigning Words and Actions as Snares laid to entrap us ... So this unfortunate Lady, divided between Excess of Love, and Nicety of Honour, could neither resolve to give a loose to the one, nor entirely obey the Precepts of the other, but suffered herself to be tossed alternately by both. And tho the Person she loved was most certainly (if such a thing can be) deserving all the Condescensions a Woman could make, by his a.s.siduity, Constancy, and Grat.i.tude, yet it must be a good while before she could receive those Proofs; and the Disquiets she suffered in that time of Probation, were, I think, if no worse ensued, too dear a Price for the Pleasure of being beloved by the most engaging and most charming of his s.e.x.”
The ”Discourse concerning Writings of this Nature,” from which the above quotation is taken, makes no attempt to consider other series of amorous letters, but proceeds to enforce by plat.i.tudes and sc.r.a.ps of poetry the only too obvious moral of the lady of quality's correspondence. The author remembers how ”a Lady of my Acquaintance, perhaps not without reason, fell one day, as she was sitting with me, into this Poetical Exclamation:
'The Pen can furrow a fond Female's Heart, And pierce it more than Cupid's talk'd-of Dart: Letters, a kind of Magick Virtue have, And, like strong Philters, human Souls enslave!'”
After thirty pages of moralizing the writer comes to a conclusion with the reflection, a commonplace of her novels, that ”if the little I have done, may give occasion to some abler Pen to expose [such indiscretions]
more effectually, I shall think myself happy in having given a hint, which improv'd, may be of so general a Service to my s.e.x.” But the impression left by this and others of Mrs. Haywood's works is that the fair novelist was not so much interested in preventing the inadvertencies of her s.e.x as in exposing them.
The tender pa.s.sion was still the theme in ”Love-Letters on All Occasions Lately pa.s.sed between Persons of Distinction,” which contains a number of letters, mainly disconnected, devoted to the warmer phases of gallantry. Some are essays in little on definite subjects: levity, sincerity, the pleasures of conjugal affection, insensibility, and so on. Most of them, however, are occasional: ”Strephon to Dalinda, on her forbidding him to speak of Love,” ”Orontes to Deanira, entreating her to give him a meeting,” and many others in which both the proper names and the situations suggest the artificial romances. None of the missives reveals emotions of any but the most tawdry romantic kind, warm desires extravagantly uttered, conventional doubts, causeless jealousies, and petty quarrels. Like Mrs. Behn's correspondence with the amorous Van Bruin these epistles have nothing to distinguish them except their excessive hyperbole. There is one series of twenty-four connected letters on the model of ”Letters from a Lady of Quality to a Chevalier,”
relating the love story of Theano and Elismonda, but in the course of the whole correspondence nothing more momentous occurs than the lover's leaving town. Indeed so imperceptible is the narrative element in Mrs.