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Title: The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood

Author: George Frisbie Whicher

Release Date: January 31, 2004 [EBook #10889]

Language: English

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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 h