Though Eliza Haywood exhausted nearly every possible bit of sensationalism that could be extracted from tales of passion, she almost never made use of the heroic feats of arms which constituted a no less important resource of the French romances. Her heroes are victors in love but not in war. The sole exception is a little romance of Moorish chivalry in the eighth century. Though this period had already been pre-empted by Mrs. Manley's "Memoirs of Europe," there is little doubt that Mrs. Haywood was responsible for "The Arragonian Queen: A Secret History" (1724), a peculiar blend of heroic adventures in battle, bullfight, and tournament, with amorous intrigues of the most involved kind.
Prince Albaraizor of Arragon goes to assist Omar, King of Valencia, against a traitorous foe, and with the help of the young general, Abdelhamar, succeeds in vanquishing the enemy, though the latter youth is seriously wounded while performing miracles of valor. To reward the conqueror the hand of the Princess Zephalinda is bestowed upon him, but she unfortunately is already enamored of Abdelhamar, whom she had learned to love at a bullfight. But in spite of a repining letter from her constant lover, and in spite of his appearance before her all pale and trembling from his wounds, the Princess refuses to deviate from her duty.
"The next Day the Marriage was celebrated with all the intended Magnificence, and on their return from the Mosque, the Prince and Princess repair'd to a stately Scaffold, adorn'd with inventive Luxury, whence they might behold a Tournament, the Prize of which was a Sword richly embellish'd with Diamonds, to be given by the Princess to him that should overcome; the whole Court were there, endeavouring to outshine each other in the Costliness of their Apparel—within the Barriers were all the Flower of the adjoining Kingdoms, drawn thither with a Thirst of Fame, and a Desire to shew their Dexterity. The Arragonian Noblemen were the Defenders against all Comers, and were like to have carried away the Prize, behaving themselves with the utmost Skill and Courage, when there appear'd in the Lists a Knight in black Armour, whose whole Air and dexterity in Horsemanship immediately attracted the Eyes of the numerous Spectators; the first Course he made, confirm'd them in the good opinion they had conceiv'd of him: in short, no body was able to stand against him, and he remain'd Conqueror, with the universal Applause of the whole Company. —He waited for some time, to see if no fresh Challengers would offer themselves; but none appearing, he was led to the Princess's Scaffold, to receive the Reward he had so well merited: He took it with the greatest Submission, but without putting up his Beaver, or discovering who he was, and kissing it with profound Respect, retir'd, without so much as making any obeisance to the King or Prince; and mixing himself with the Crowd of Knights, got off without being discover'd. Every body was surpriz'd at the uncourteous Behaviour of so otherwise accomplish'd a Cavalier, but none could possibly give the least guess at who it should be—the succeeding Diversions soon put him out of every body's Thoughts but Zephalinda's; she well knew it could be none but Abdelhamar, and trembled lest he should have been discovered, fearing his concealing his Recovery, and his disrespectful Carriage towards her Father and her Husband, might have given room to Surmises prejudicial to her Honour: but when watching him with her Eyes, and seeing him get off unfollow'd, or observ'd, she then began afresh to pine at Fate, who could render Abdelhamar Conqueror in every Action that he undertook, and only vanquish'd when he fought in hopes of gaining her."
The Prince and his bride return to their own country to receive the crown. By the most tender assiduities Albaraizor has almost succeeded in gaining the love of his wife when Abdelhamar again intrudes as ambassador to congratulate him on his coronation. Though her old love returns more strongly than ever, the Queen guards her honor well, and insists that her lover marry Selyma, a captive Princess. But that lady, stung by Abdelhamar's indifference, learns to hate him, and out of revenge persuades the King that his wife is unfaithful to him. An indiscreet letter from Abdelhamar confirms his suspicions. He orders both Queen and ambassador cast into prison and by his woes destroys the happiness of the whole court.
The passages relating the monarch's love and jealousy are described with a fulness entirely lacking in the tournament scene quoted above, and we may fairly infer that both writer and reader were more deeply interested in affairs of the heart than in feats of arms, however glorious. The emphasis given to love rather than to war in this tale is significant as a contrast to the opposite tendency in such romances of a century later as "Ivanhoe," in which a tournament scene very similar in outline to that in "The Arragonian Queen" is told with the greatest attention to warlike detail, while the love story, though not allowed to languish, is kept distinctly subordinate to the narrative of chivalric adventure. Mrs. Haywood, however, was too warm-blooded a creature to put aside the interests of the heart for the sake of a barbarous Gothic brawl, and too experienced a writer not to know that her greatest forte lay in painting the tender rather than the sterner passions.
In this respect she forms a decided contrast to Defoe, whose men and women are almost never startled out of their matter-of-fact attitude. His picaresque characters, though outwardly rogues or their female counterparts, have at bottom something of the dissenting parson and cool-headed, middle-aged man of business. Whatever else they may be, they are never love-sick. Passion is to them a questionable asset, and if they marry, they are like to have the matter over with in the course of half a paragraph. Eliza Haywood, however, possessed in excess the one gift that Defoe lacked. To the scribbling authoress love was the force that motivated all the world. Crude and conventional as are many of her repeated attempts to analyze the workings of a mind under the sway of soft desires, she nevertheless succeeded now and then in actuating her heroines with genuine emotion. Both romance and realism were woven into the intricate web of the Richardsonian novel, and the contribution of Mrs. Haywood deserves to be remembered if only because she supplied the one element missing in Defoe's masterpieces. Each writer in his day was considered paramount in his or her particular field.[19]
FOOTNOTES [1]Les Héros de Roman, 1664, circulated in MS. and printed in 1688 without the consent of the author. Not included in Boileau'sWorksuntil 1713.
[2] The story of Tellisinda, who to avoid the reproach of barrenness imposes an adopted child upon her husband, but later bearing a son, is obliged to see a spurious heir inherit her own child's estate, was borrowed with slight changes from La Belle Assemblée, I, Day 5, and used in Mrs. Haywood'sFruitless Enquiry, (1727).
[3]La Pierre philosophale des dames, ou les Caprices de l'amour et du destin, by Louis Adrien Duperron de Castera, (1723), 12mo.
[4]L'Illustre Parisienne, (1679), variously attributed to Préchac and to Mme de Villedieu, had already been translated asThe Illustrious Parisian Maid, or The Secret Amours of a German Prince, (1680). A synopsis is given by H.E. Chatenet,Le Roman et les Romans d'une femme de lettres … Mme de Villedieu, (Paris, 1911), 253-9.
[5] I have not seen a copy of the book.
[6] Mrs. E. Griffith's comment on the work is typical of the tendency to moralize even the amusements of the day. SeeA Collection of Novels, (1777), II, 162. "The idea on which this piece is founded, has a good deal of merit in it; as tending to abate envy, and conciliate content; by shewing, in a variety of instances, that appearances are frequently fallacious; that perfect or permanent happiness is not the lot of mortal life; and that peace of mind and rational enjoyment are only to be found in bosoms free from guilt, and from intimate connection with the guilty."
[7] I have omitted two or three unessential stories in the analysis.
[8] Act I, sc. ii. In the novel the heroine is shut up by a miserly hunks of an uncle to force her into a detested mercenary match with his son. In the play the mistress is the wife of the old and jealous keeper of the asylum.
[9] Preface toThe Mercenary Lover, (1726).
[10]The Rash Resolve, (1724).
[11]The Double Marriage, (1726).
[12] Lodge'sRosalynde, ed.E.C. Baldwin, p. 19.Philidore and Placentia(1727), p. 12.
[13] Miss C.E. Morgan,The Novel of Manners, (1911), 100.
[14] A companion-piece to the third edition ofThe Mercenary Lover, (1728).
[15] A companion-piece toThe Fatal Secret: or, Constancy in Distress.
[16]Monthly Review, XXXVIII, 412, May, 1768.Clementina; or the History of an Italian Lady, who made her Escape from a Monastery,etc.
[17]Critical Review, XXV, 59.
[18] In both editions is advertised "Persecuted Virtue: or, the Cruel Lover. A True Secret History, Writ at the Request of a Lady of Quality," which was advertised also in theDaily Post, 28 Nov. 1728. I have not found a copy.
[19]An anonymous poem prefixed to Mrs. Elizabeth Boyd'sThe HappyUnfortunate; or, the Female Page(1737) testifies to Mrs. Haywood'sreputation in the following terms:
"Yeild [sic] Heywood yeild, yeild all whose tender Strains,Inspire the Dreams of Maids and lovesick Swains;Who taint the unripen'd Girl with amorous Fire,And hint the first faint Dawnings of Desire:Wing each Love-Atom, that in Embryo lies,And teach young Parthenissa's Breasts to rise.A new Elisa writes," etc., etc.
Only once did Eliza Haywood compete with Defoe upon the same ground. Both novelists were alive to the value of sensational matter, but as we have seen, appealed to the reader's emotional nature from different sides. Defoe with his strong interest in practical life looked for stirring incidents, for strange and surprising adventures on land and sea, for unusual or uncanny occurrences; whereas Mrs. Haywood, less a journalist than a romancer, rested her claim to public favor upon the secure basis of the tender passions. In the books exploiting the deaf and dumb prophet Duncan Campbell, whose fame, once illustrated by notices in the "Tatler" and "Spectator,"[1] was becoming a little dimmed by 1720, each writer chose the kind of material that the natural propensity and previous experience of each had trained him or her to use with the greatest success.
Accordingly the "History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell, a gentleman who, though deaf and dumb, writes down any stranger's name at first sight, with their future contingencies of fortune: Now living in Exeter Court, over against the Savoy in the Strand," published by Curll on 30 April, 1720, and written largely by Defoe, devoted only four chapters directly to the narrative of the conjuror's life, while four chapters and the Appendix were given over to disquisitions upon the method of teaching deaf and dumb persons to read and write; upon the perception of demons, genii, or familiar spirits; upon the second sight; upon magic in all its branches; and upon the laws against false diviners and soothsayers. Beside showing the keenness of his interest in the supernatural, the author deliberately avoided any occasion for talking gossip or for indulging "persons of airy tempers" with sentimental love-tales. "Instead of making them a bill of fare out of patchwork romances and polluting scandal," reads the preface signed by Duncan Campbell, "the good old gentleman who wrote the adventures of my life has made it his business to treat them with a great variety of entertaining passages which always terminate in morals that tend to the edification of all readers, of whatsoever sex, age, or profession." Those who came to consult the seer on affairs of the heart, therefore, received only the scantiest mention from his biographer, and never were the languishing and sighing of Mr. Campbell's devotees described with any romantic glamor. On the contrary, Defoe portrayed in terse and homely phrases the follies and affectations of the dumb man's fair clients. The young blooming beauty who found little Duncan "wallowing in the dust" and bribed him with a sugarplum to reveal the name of her future husband; the "sempstress with an itching desire for a parson"; housekeepers in search of stolen goods; the "widow who bounced" from one end of the room to the other and finally "scuttled too airily downstairs for a woman in her clothes"; and the chambermaid disguised as a fine lady, who by "the toss of her head, the jut of the bum, the sidelong leer of the eye" proclaimed her real condition—these types are treated by Defoe in a blunt realistic manner entirely foreign to Eliza Haywood's vein. Some passages,[2] perhaps, by a sentiment too exalted or by a description in romantic style suggest the hand of another writer, possibly Mrs. Haywood, but more probably William Bond, in whose name the reprint of 1728 was issued.[3] But in the main, the book reflected Defoe's strong tendency to speculate upon unusual and supernatural phenomena, and utterly failed to "divulge the secret intrigues and amours of one part of the sex, to give the other part room to make favorite scandal the subject of their discourse."[4]
That Defoe had refrained from treating one important aspect of Duncan Campbell's activities he was well aware. "If I was to tell his adventures with regard, for instance, to women that came to consult him, I might, perhaps, have not only written the stories of eleven thousand virgins that died maids, but have had the relations to give of as many married women and widows, and the work would have been endless."[5] In his biography of the Scotch prophet he does not propose to clog the reader with any adventures save the most remarkable and those in various ways mysterious.
The "method of swelling distorted and commented trifles into volumes" he is content to leave to the writers of fable and romance. It was not long before the press-agents of the dumb presager found a romancer willing to undertake the task that Defoe neglected. Mrs. Haywood in her association with Aaron Hill and his circle could hardly have escaped knowing William Bond, who in 1724 was playing Steele to Hill's Addison in producing the numbers of the "Plain Dealer." Instigated perhaps by him, the rising young novelist contributed on 19 March, 1724, the second considerable work on the fortune-teller, under the caption: "A Spy upon the Conjurer: or, a Collection of Surprising Stories, with Names, Places, and particular Circumstances relating to Mr. Duncan Campbell, commonly known by the Name of the Deaf and Dumb Man; and the astonishing Penetration and Event of his Predictions. Written to my Lord—— by a Lady, who for more than Twenty Years past; has made it her Business to observe all Transactions in the Life and Conversation of Mr. Campbell."[5a]
"As long as Atalantis shall be read," some readers were sure to find little to their taste in the curious information contained in the first biography of Campbell, but Mrs. Haywood was not reluctant to gratify an appetite for scandal when she could profitably cater to it. Developing the clue afforded her by the announcement in Defoe's "Life and Adventures" of a forthcoming little pocket volume of original letters that passed between Mr. Campbell and his correspondents,[6] she composed a number of epistles as coming from all sorts of applicants to the prophet. These missives, however, were preceded by a long letter addressed to an anonymous lord and signed "Justicia," which was chiefly concocted of anecdotes illustrative of the dumb man's powers. Unlike the incidents in Defoe's work, the greater number of the stories relate to love affairs in the course of which one party or the other invoked the seer's assistance. Although the author was thoroughly acquainted with the previous history of Mr. Campbell,[7] she was evidently more interested in the phenomena of passion than in the theory of divination, A brief discussion of astrology, witchcraft, and dreams easily led her to a narrative of "Mr. Campbell's sincerity exemplify'd, in the story of a lady injured in the tenderest part by a pretended friend." A glance through the table of contents reveals the preponderance of such headings as "A strange story of a young lady, who came to ask the name of her husband"; "A whimsical story of an old lady who wanted a husband"; "Reflections on the inconstancy of men. A proof of it in a ruin'd girl, that came to ask Mr. Campbell's advice"; "A story of my Lady Love-Puppy"; "A merry story of a lady's chamber-maid, cook-maid, and coach-man," and so on. Evidences of an attempt to suggest, if not actual references to, contemporary scandal, are to be found in such items as "A strange instance of vanity and jealousy in the behaviour of Mrs. F—- "; "The particulars of the fate of Mrs. J—— L—— "; and "A story of the Duke of—— 's mistress." It is not surprising that "Memoirs of a Certain Island" appeared within six months of "A Spy upon the Conjurer."
When "Justicia" refers to her personal relations with the lord to whom her letter is addressed, her comments are still more in keeping with the acknowledged forte of the lady novelist. They are permeated with the tenderest emotions. The author of "Moll Flanders" and "The Fortunate Mistress" might moralize upon the unhappy consequences of love, but he was inclined to regard passion with an equal mind. He stated facts simply. Love, in his opinion, was not a strong motive when uncombined with interest. But Eliza Haywood held the romantic watchword of all for love, and her books are a continual illustration ofAmor vincit omnia. In the present case her words seem to indicate that the passions of love and jealousy so often experienced by her characters were not unfamiliar to her own breast. Even Duncan Campbell's predictions were unable to alter her destiny.
"But tho' I was far enough from disbelieving what he said, yet Youth, Passion, and Inadvertency render'd his Cautions ineffectual. It was in his Hand-Writing I first beheld the dear fatal Name, which has since been the utter Destruction of my Peace: It was from him I knew I should be undone by Love and the Perfidy of Mankind, before I had the least Notion of the one, or had seen any of the other charming enough to give me either Pain or Pleasure…. Yet besotted as I was, I had neither the Power of defending myself from the Assaults of Love, nor Thought sufficient to enable me to make those Preparations which were necessary for my future Support, while I had yet the means" …(p. 13).
"Yet so it is with our inconsiderate Sex!—To vent a present Passion, —for the short liv'd Ease of railing at the Baseness of an ungrateful Lover,—to gain a little Pity,—we proclaim our Folly, and become the Jest of all who know us.—A forsaken Woman immediately grows the Object of Derision,—rallied by the Men, and pointed at by every little Flirt, who fancies herself secure in her own Charms of never being so, and thinks 'tis want of Merit only makes a Wretch.
"For my dear Lord, I am sensible, tho' our Wounds have been a long time heal'd, there yet remains a Tenderness, which, if touch'd, will smart afresh.—The Darts of Passion, such as we have felt, make too indeliable an Impression ever to be quite eraz'd;—they are not content with the eternal Sear they leave on the Reputation …" (p.76).
These passages are in substance and style after Eliza Haywood's manner, while the experiences therein hinted at do not differ essentially from the circumstances of her own life.
The various aspects of love and jealousy are also the theme of the second and third parts of "A Spy upon the Conjurer."[8] The two packets of letters were merely imaginary, unless the pseudonymous signatures of some of the missives may have aided contemporary readers to "smoke" allusions to current gossip. At any rate the references are now happily beyond our power to fathom.
Apparently the taste for Duncan Campbell anecdotes was stimulated by the piquant sauce of scandal, for beside the several issues of "A Spy upon the Conjurer" a second and smaller volume of the same sort was published on 10 May, 1725. This sixpenny pamphlet of forty pages, entitled "The Dumb Projector: Being a Surprizing Account of a Trip to Holland made by Mr. Duncan Campbell. With the Manner of his Reception and Behaviour there. As also the various and diverting Occurrences that happened on his Departure," was, like the former work, couched in the form of a letter to a nobleman and signed "Justicia." Both from internal evidence[9] and from the style it can be assigned with confidence to the author of "A Spy upon the Conjurer." The story, relating how Mr. Campbell was induced to go into Holland in the hope of making his fortune, how he was disappointed, the extraordinary instances of his power, and his adventures amatory and otherwise, is of little importance as a narrative. The account differs widely from that of Campbell's trip to the Netherlands in the "Life and Adventures" of 1720.
Soon after the publication of "The Dumb Projector" Defoe also made a second contribution to the now considerable Duncan Campbell literature under the title of "The Friendly Daemon: or, the Generous Apparition. Being a True Narrative of a Miraculous Cure newly performed upon … Dr. Duncan Campbell, by a familiar Spirit, that appeared to him in a white surplice, like a Cathedral Singing Boy." The quotation of the story from Glanvil already used by the prophet's original biographer, and the keen interest in questions of the supernatural displayed by the writer, make the attribution of this piece to Defoe a practical certainty. Evidently, then, Eliza Haywood was not the only one to profit by keeping alive the celebrity of the fortune-teller.
The year 1728 was marked by the reissue of the "Life and Adventures" as "The Supernatural Philosopher … by William Bond," whose probable connection with the work has already been discussed, and by the publication in the "Craftsman"[10] of a letter, signed "Fidelia," describing a visit to Duncan Campbell. The writer, who professes an intense admiration for Mr. Caleb D'Anvers and all his works, relates how the dumb oracle, after writing down her name, had prophesied that the Craftsman would certainly gain his point in 1729. She concludes with praise of Mr. Campbell, and an offer to conduct Caleb to visit him on the ensuing Saturday. That the communication was not to be regarded as a companion-piece to the letter from Dulcibela Thankley in the "Spectator" (No. 474), was the purport of the editorial statement which introduced it: "I shall make no other Apology for the Vanity, which I may seem guilty of in publishing the following Letter, than assuring the Reader it isgenuine, and that I do it in Complyance with the repeated Importunity of afair Correspondent." The style of the letter does not strongly suggest that of "A Spy upon the Conjurer," though the concluding sentence, "Loveshall be there too, who waits forever uponWit," is a sentiment after Eliza's heart. And moreover, though "Fidelia" and "Justicia" may be one and the same persons, Mr. D'Anvers' assurances that the letter is genuine are not to be relied upon with too much confidence, for had he wished to praise himself, he would naturally have resorted to some such device.
The last volume relating to the Scotch wizard did not appear until 1732, two years after Campbell's death. "Secret Memoirs of the late Mr. Duncan Campbel, The famous Deaf and Dumb Gentleman. Written by Himself, who ordered they should be publish'd after his Decease," consisted of 164 pages devoted to miscellaneous anecdotes of the prophet, a reprint of Defoe's "Friendly Daemon" (p. 166), "Original Letters sent to Mr. Campbel by his Consulters" (p. 196), and "An Appendix, By Way of Vindication of Mr. Duncan Campbel, Against That groundless Aspersion cast upon him, That he but pretended to be Deaf and Dumb. By a Friend of the Deceased" (p. 225). The authorship of this book has received but slight attention from students of Defoe, and still remains something of a puzzle. No external evidence on the point has yet come to light, but some probable conclusions may be reached through an examination of the substance and style.
In the first place, there is no probability—the statement on the title-page notwithstanding—that Mr. Campbell himself had anything to do with the composition of the "Memoirs." Since the magician had taken no part in the literary exploitation of his fame during his lifetime, it is fair to infer that he did not begin to do so two years after his death. Moreover, each of the three writers, Bond, Defoe, and Eliza Haywood, already identified with the Campbell pamphlets was perfectly capable of passing off fiction as feigned biography. Both the author of "Memoirs of a Cavalier" and the scribbler of secret histories had repeatedly used the device. There is no evidence, however, that William Bond had any connection with the present work, but a large share of it was almost certainly done by Defoe and Mrs. Haywood.
The former had died full of years on 26 April, 1731, about a year before the "Secret Memoirs" was published. It is possible, however, that he may have assembled most of the material for the book and composed a number of pages. The inclusion of his "Friendly Daemon" makes this suspicion not unlikely. And furthermore, certain anecdotes told in the first section, particularly in the first eighty pages, are such stories as would have appealed to Defoe's penchant for the uncanny, and might well have been selected by him. The style is not different from that of pieces known to be his.
But that the author of "Robinson Crusoe" would have told the "little History" of the young woman without a fortune who obtains the husband she desires by means of a magic cake (p. 86) is scarcely probable, for the story is a sentimental tale that would have appealed to love-sick Lydia Languishes. As far as we know, Defoe remained hard-headed to the last. But Mrs. Haywood when she was not a scandal-monger, was a sentimentalist. The story would have suited her temperament and the tastes of her readers. It is told so much in her manner that one could swear that the originator of the anecdote wasaut Eliza, aut diabola. A few pages further on (p. 104) appears the incident of a swaggerer who enters the royal vault of Westminster Abbey at dead of night on a wager, and having the tail of his coat twitched by the knife he has stuck in the ground, is frightened into a faint—a story which Mrs. Haywood later retold in different words in her "Female Spectator."[11] The "Secret Memoirs" further informs us by a casual remark of Mr. Campbell's that Eliza Haywood was well acquainted with the seer.
"Sometimes, when surrounded by my Friends, such as Anthony Hammond,Esq; Mr. Philip Horneck, Mr. Philips, Mr.——, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs.Fowk, Mrs. Eliza Haywood, and other celebrated Wits, of which myHouse, for some Years has been the general Rendezvous, a good Bowl ofPunch before me, and the Glass going round in a constant Circle ofMirth and Good Humour, I have, in a Moment, beheld Sights which hasfroze my very Blood, and put me into Agonies that disordered the wholeCompany" (p. 131).
The last anecdote in the first section is a repetition at some length of the story of Campbell's adventures in Holland, not as related in Defoe's "Life and Adventures," but according to the version in Mrs Haywood's "Dumb Projector." The beginning, which has to do with a grave old gentleman who was bit by a viper, is told in almost the same words; indeed some letters that passed between the characters are identically the same, and the end, though much abbreviated, contains a number of sentences taken word for word from the earlier telling of the story. Finally, Mrs. Haywood was the first and hitherto the only writer of the Campbell pamphlets who had printed letters supposedly addressed to the prophet by his clients. The device was peculiarly hers. The "Original Letters sent to Mr. Campbel by his Consulters" in the "Secret Memoirs" are similar to those already composed by her for "A Spy upon the Conjurer." There is no reason to think that she did not invent the later epistles as well as the former.
If, then, a number of anecdotes in the "Secret Memoirs" are suggestive of Mrs. Haywood's known writings, and if one of them remained in her memory thirteen years later; if the pamphlet carefully alludes to Eliza Haywood as one of the dumb seer's particular friends, and if it repeats in slightly different form her peculiar account of the dumb projector's journey into Holland; and if, finally, the book contains a series of letters to Campbell from fictitious correspondents fashioned on the last already used by her, we may conclude that in all likelihood the authoress whose name had previously been associated with Duncan Campbell literature was again concerned in writing or revising this latest work. At least a cautious critic can say that there is no inherent improbability in the theory that Defoe with journalistic instinct, thinking that Campbell's death in 1730 might stimulate public interest in the wizard, had drafted in the rough the manuscript of a new biography, but was prevented by the troubles of his last days from completing it; that after his death the manuscript fell into the hands of Mrs. Haywood, or perhaps was given to her by the publishers Millan and Chrichley to finish; that she revised the material already written, supplemented it with new and old matter of her own, composed a packet of Original Letters, and sent the volume to press. The origin of the "Appendix, by Way of Vindication of Mr. Duncan Campbel" remains unknown, and any theory about the authorship of the "Secret Memoirs" must be regarded in last analysis as largely conjectural.[11a]
Though the author of the original "Life and Adventures" has received most of the credit due to Campbell's biographer, Mrs. Haywood, as we have seen, was not less active in exploiting the deaf and dumb gentleman. Her "Spy upon the Conjurer" was fubbed off upon the public as often as Defoe's earlier volume, and neither writer could claim any advantage over the other from his second and slighter contribution. Each held successfully his own coign of vantage. Eliza Haywood, in contemporary opinion, outranked Defoe almost as far as an interpreter of the heart as he surpassed her in concocting an account of a new marvel or a tale of strange adventure. The arbitress of the passions indeed wrote nothing to compare in popularity with "Robinson Crusoe," but before 1740 her "Love in Excess" ran through as many editions as "Moll Flanders" and its abridgments, while "Idalia: or, the Unfortunate Mistress" had been reprinted three times separately and twice with her collected novels before a reissue of Defoe's "Fortunate Mistress" was undertaken. When in 1740 Applebee published a new edition of "Roxana," he had it supplemented by "a continuation of nearly one hundred and fifty pages, many of which are filled with rubbish about women named Cleomira and Belinda."[12] Here again Mrs. Haywood's red herring crossed the trail of Defoe, for oddly enough the sheets thus accurately characterized were transcribed word for word from Eliza's second novel, "The British Recluse." At the point where the heroine swallows a sleeping potion supposing it poison, faints, and is thought to be dead, the narrative breaks off abruptly with the words:
"Though the History of Cleomira and Belinda's Misfortunes, may be thought foreign to my Affairs … yet it is absolutely necessary I should give it a Place, because it is the Source, or Spring, of many strange and uncommon Scenes, which happened to me during the remaining Part of my Life, and which I cannot give an Account of without" …[13]
The pages which follow relate how Roxana became reconciled to her daughter, died in peace, and was buried at Hornsey. The curious reader finds, however, no further mention of Belinda and her friend. Evidently Applebee's hack simply stole as much copy as he needed from an almost forgotten book, trusting to receive his money before the fraud was discovered. The volumes of Eliza Haywood were indeed a mine of emotional scenes, and those who wished to read of warm desires or palpitating passions had to turn to her romances or do without. Wretched as her work seems in comparison to the modern novel, it was for the time being the nearest approach to idealistic fiction and to the analysis of human feelings. Defoe's romances of incident were the triumphant culmination of the picaresque type; Mrs. Haywood's sentimental tales were in many respects mere vague inchoations of a form as yet to be produced. But when freed from the impurities of intrigue and from the taint of scandal, the novel of heart interest became the dominant type of English fiction. Unfortunately, however, Eliza Haywood was too practical a writer to outrun her generation. The success of "A Spy upon the Conjurer" may have convinced her that a ready market awaited stories of amorous adventure and hinted libel. At any rate, she soon set out to gratify the craving for books of that nature in a series of writings which redounded little to her credit, though they brought her wide notoriety.
FOOTNOTES [1]Tatler, No. 14;Spectator, Nos. 323, 474, 560.
[2] Particularly the incongruous description of Duncan Campbell's first appearance in London, where the writer finds the "heavenly youth" seated like a young Adonis in the "center of an angelic tribe" of "the most beautiful females that ever my eyes beheld," etc. G.A. Aitken's edition ofThe Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell, 87-9.
[3]The Supernatural Philosopher… by William Bond, of Bury St. Edmonds [Transcriber's note: sic], Suffolk. The preface signed by Campbell to Defoe'sLife and Adventuresstates that the book was revised by "a young gentleman of my acquaintance." Professor Trent, however, includes Mrs. Haywood with Bond as a possible assistant in the revision. SeeThe Cambridge History of English Literature, IX, 23.
[4] Neither Defoe nor Mrs. Haywood contributed to the little budget of miscellaneous matter prefixed to the second issue of theLife and Adventures(August, 1720) and sometimes found separately under the title:Mr. Campbell's Pacquet, for the Entertainment of Gentlemen and Ladies. Containing I. Verses to Mr. Campbell, Occasioned by the History of his Life and Adventures. By Mrs. Fowke, Mr. Philips, &c. II. The Parallel, a Poem. Comparing the Poetical Productions of Mr. Pope, with the Prophetical Predictions of Mr. Campbell. By Capt. Stanhope, [i. e. W. Bond.]III. An Account of a most surprizing Apparition; sent from Launceston in Cornwall. Attested by the Rev. Mr. Ruddie, Minister there.London: For T. Bickerton. 1720. See W. Lee,Daniel Defoe, 322-8.
[5]Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell, 171.
[5a] This volume was announced in theBritish Journalas early as Dec. 15, 1722.
[6] She or Bond may have inserted the passage to advertise a projected work. Mr. Spectator had already remarked of the letters that came to his office: "I know some Authors, who would pick up aSecret Historyout of such materials, and make a Bookseller an Alderman by the Copy." (No. 619.)
[7] Defoe'sLife and Adventuresis mentioned on pp. 17 (with a quotation), 61, 111, 246, 257.
[8]Part II. Being a Collection of Letters found in Mr. Campbell's Closet.By the Lady who wrote the foregoing sheets. Part III. Containing someLetters from Persons of Mr. Campbell's more particular Acquaintance.
[9] "The Pleasure with which you received mySpyon the Conjurer, encourages me to offer you a little Supplement to it, having since my finishing that Book, had the opportunity of discovering something concerning Mr. Campbell, which I believe your Lordship will allow to be infinitely more surprizing than any Thing I have yet related."The Dumb Projector, 5. Mr. G. A. Aitken, in his introduction to Defoe'sLife and Adventures, gives the two pieces unhesitatingly to Mrs. Haywood, while other students of Defoe,—Leslie Stephen, Lee, Wright, and Professor Trent,—are unanimous in their opinion that the first exploiter of the dumb wizard could have had no hand in the writing of these amplifications. The latest bibliographer of romances and tales, Mr. Arundell Esdaile, however, follows the B.M. catalogue in listingThe Dumb Projectorunder the convenient name of Defoe.
[10] No. 125, Saturday. 23 November, 1728.
[11]The Female Spectator, 1745, II, 246.
[11a] In 1734 appeared a compilation of tables for computing Easter, etc., entitledTime's Telescope Universal and Perpetual, Fitted for all Countries and Capacities… ByDuncan Campbell. What connection, if any, this book had with the fortune-teller or with any of the persons connected with his biography appears not to have been determined.
[12] G.A. Aitken, Introduction toThe Fortunate Mistress, viii.
[13]The Fortunate Mistress; or, a History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau…. London: Printed for E. Applebee. 1740. p. 359. Pp. 300-59 are taken fromThe British Recluse.
Some tentative experiments in the way of scandal-mongering may be found in Mrs. Haywood's work even before the first of her Duncan Campbell pamphlets. Many of the short romances discussed in the second chapter were described on the title-page as secret histories, while others apparently indistinguishable from them in kind were denominated novels. "Love in Excess" and "The Unequal Conflict," for instance, were given the latter title, but a tale like "Fantomina," evidently imaginary, purported to be the "Secret History of an Amour between two Persons of Condition." "The British Recluse" was in sub-title the "Secret History of Cleomira," and "Cleomelia: or, the Generous Mistress" claimed to be the "Secret History of a Lady Lately arriv'd from Bengall." The writer attached no particular significance to her use of the term, but employed it as a means of stimulating a meretricious interest in her stories. In fact she goes out of her way in the Preface to "The Injur'd Husband" to defend herself and at the same time to suggest the possibility that her novel might contain references to English contemporaries. The defence is carefully worded so that it does not constitute an absolute denial, but rather whets the curiosity.
"It is not, therefore, to excuse my Want of Judgment in the Conduct, or my Deficiency of Expressing the Passions I have endeavour'd to represent, but to clear myself of an Accusation, which, I am inform'd, is already contrived and prepared to thunder out against me, as soon as this is publish'd, that I take this Pains. A Gentleman, who applies the little Ingenuity he is Master of to no other Study than that of sowing Dissention among those who are so unhappy, and indeed unwise, as to entertain him, either imagines, or pretends to do so, that tho' I have laid the Scene in Paris, I mean that the Adventure shou'd be thought to have happen'd in London; and that in the Character of a French Baroness I have attempted to expose the Reputation of an English Woman of Quality. I shou'd be sorry to think the Actions of any of our Ladies such as you'd give room for a Conjecture of the Reality of what he wou'd suggest. But suppose there were indeed an Affinity between the Vices I have describ'd, and those of some Woman he knows (for doubtless if there be, she must be of his Acquaintance) I leave the World to judge to whom she is indebted for becoming the Subject of Ridicule, to me for drawing a Picture whose Original is unknown, or to him who writes her Name at the Bottom of it.
"However, if I had design'd this as a Satyr on any Person whose Crimes I had thought worthy of it, I shou'd not have thought the Resentment of such a one considerable enough to have obliged me to deny it. But as I have only related a Story, which a particular Friend of mine assures me is Matter of Fact, and happen'd at the Time when he was in Paris: I wou'd not have it made Use of as an Umbrage for the Tongue of Scandal to blast the Character of any one, a Stranger to such detested Guilt."
Before long the term "secret history" fell into disrepute, so that writers found it necessary to make a special plea for the veracity of their work. "The Double Marriage," "The Mercenary Lover," and "Persecuted Virtue" were distinguished as "true secret histories," and in the Preface to "The Pair Hebrew: or, a True, but Secret History of Two Jewish Ladies, Who lately resided in London" Mrs. Haywood at once confessed the general truth of the charge against the type and defended the accuracy of her own production.
"There are so many Things, meerly the Effect of Invention, which have been published, of late, under the Title of SECRET HISTORIES, that, to distinguish this, I am obliged to inform my Reader, that I have not inserted one Incident which was not related to me by a Person nearly concerned in the Family of that unfortunate Gentleman, who had no other Consideration in the Choice of a Wife, than to gratify a present Passion for the Enjoyment of her Beauty."
About 1729 Eliza Haywood seems to have found the word "Life" or "Memoirs" on the title-page a more effective means for gaining the credence of her readers, and after that time she wrote, in name at least, no more secret histories. The fictions so denominated in "Secret Histories, Novels and Poems" were in no way different from her novels, and had only the slightest, if any, foundation in fact.
A novel actually based upon a real occurrence, however, is "Dalinda, or the Double Marriage. Being the Genuine History of a very Recent, and Interesting Adventure" (1749), not certainly known to have been written by Mrs. Haywood, but bearing in the turns of expression, the letters, and the moralized ending, almost indubitable marks of her handiwork. One at least of her favorite quotations comes in at an appropriate point, and the Preface to the Reader states that the author's sole design is to show the danger of inadvertently giving way to the passions—a stock phrase with the author of "Love in Excess." The "Monthly Review" informs us that the story is "the affair betwixt Mr. Cresswell and Miss Scrope, thrown into the form of a novel."[1] The situation is somewhat similar to that described in "The Mercenary Lover."
Dalinda's unhappy passion for Malvolio incites him to ruin her, and though he deludes her with an unregistered marriage at the Fleet, he has no scruples against marrying the rich Flavilla. Wishing to possess both Flavilla's fortune and Dalinda's charms, he effects a reconciliation with the latter by promising to own their prior contract, but when he comes out into the open and proposes to entertain her as a mistress, she indignantly returns to her grandmother's house, where she summons her brother and her faithful lover, Leander, to force her perfidious husband to do her justice. The latter half of the novel is a tissue of intrigue upon intrigue, with a complication of lawsuits and letters in which Malvolio's villainy is fully exposed, and he is forced to separate from Flavilla, but is unable to exert his claims upon Dalinda. She in turn cannot wring from him any compensation, nor can she in conscience recompense the faithful love of Leander while her husband is living. Thus all parties are sufficiently unhappy to make their ways a warning to the youth of both sexes.
Evidently the history, though indeed founded on fact, differs from the works of Mrs. Haywood's imagination only in the tedious length of the legal proceedings and the uncertainty of the outcome. The only reason for basing the story on the villainy of Mr. Cresswell was to take advantage of the momentary excitement over the scandal. A similar appeal to the passion for diving into the intrigues of the great is apparent in the title of a novel of 1744, "The Fortunate Foundlings: Being the Genuine History of Colonel M——rs, and his Sister, Madame du P——y, the issue of the Hon. Ch——es M——rs. Son of the late Duke of R—— L——D. Containing many wonderful Accidents that befel them in their Travels, and interspersed with the Characters and Adventures of Several Persons of Condition, in the most polite Courts of Europe." The Preface after the usual assurances that the work is compiled from original documents and is therefore more veracious than "the many Fictions which have been lately imposed upon the World, under the specious Titles of Secret Histories, Memoirs, &c," informs us that the purpose of the publication is to encourage virtue in both sexes by showing the amiableness of it in real characters. Instead of exposing vice in the actions of particular persons, the book is a highly moral laudation of those scions of the house of Manners whose names are adumbrated in the title. It cannot, therefore, be classed as a scandal novel or secret history.
The latter term, though loosely applied to the short tale of passion for the purpose of stimulating public curiosity, meant strictly only that type of pseudo-historical romance which interpreted actual history in the light of court intrigue. In France a flood of histories, annals, anecdotes, and memoirs,—secret, gallant, and above all true,—had been pouring from the press since 1665. The writers of these works proceeded upon the ostensible theory that secret history in recognizing woman's influence upon the destiny of nations was more true than "pure" history, which took into account only religious, political, social, or moral factors in judging the conduct of kings and statesmen. Did not Anthony suffer the world to slip from his fingers for the love of Cleopatra? Although the grand romances had a little exhausted the vein of classical material, Mme Durand-Bedacier and Mme de Villedieu compiled sundry annals of Grecian and Roman gallantry.[2] But the cycle of French secret history was much more extensive. Romancing historians ferreted out a prodigious amount of intrigue in every court from that of Childeric to Louis XIV, and set out to remodel the chronicle of the realm from the standpoint of the heart. Nearly every reign and every romantic hero was the subject of one or more "monographs," among which Mme de La Fayette's "Princesse de Clèves" takes a prominent place. The thesaurus and omnium gatherum of the genus was Sauval's "Intrigues galantes de la cour de France" (1695), of which Dunlop remarks that "to a passion, which has, no doubt, especially in France, had considerable effect in state affairs, there is assigned … a paramount influence." But romancers with a nose for gallantry had no difficulty in finding material for their pens in England during the times of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, and Henrietta Maria. But most frequently of all was chosen the life of the Queen of Scots.
From fifteen or sixteen French biographies of the romantic Mary[3] Mrs. Haywood drew materials for an English work of two hundred and forty pages. "Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots: Being the Secret History of her Life, and the Real Causes of all Her Misfortunes. Containing a Relation of many particular Transactions in her Reign; never yet Published in any Collection" (1725) is distinguishable from her true fiction only by the larger proportion of events between set scenes of burning passion which formed the chief constituent of Eliza's romances. As history it is worthless, and its significance as fiction lies merely in its attempt to incorporate imaginative love scenes with historical fact. It was apparently compiled hastily to compete with a rival volume, "The History of the Life and Reign of Mary Stuart," published a week earlier, and it enjoyed but a languid sale. Early in 1726 it passed into a second edition, which continued to be advertised as late as 1743.
"Mary Stuart" is the only one of Mrs. Haywood's romances that strictly deserves the name of secret history. But late in 1749 a little romance that satisfied nearly all the conditions of the type insinuated itself into the pamphlet shops without the agency of any publisher. "A Letter from H—G—g, Esq. One of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber to the Young Chevalier, and the only Person of his own Retinue that attended him from Avignon, in his late Journey through Germany, and elsewhere; Containing Many remarkable and affecting Occurrences which happened to the P—— during the course of his mysterious Progress" has been assigned to Mrs. Haywood by the late Mr. Andrew Lang,[4] perhaps on the authority of the notice in the "Monthly Review" already quoted.
The pretended author of the letter was a certain Henry Goring, a gentleman known to be in attendance upon the last of the Stuarts. The preface gives a commonplace explanation of how the letter fell into the hands of the editor through a similarity of names. Apparently the pamphlet was thought seditious because it eulogized the Young Chevalier, hinting how advantageous it would be to have him on the throne. As the secret journey progresses, the Prince has a chance to expose his admirable political tenets in conversation with a nobleman of exalted rank; in rescuing a young woman from a fire, caring for her in distress, and refusing to take advantage of her passion for him, he gives evidence of a morality not accorded him by history and proves "how fit he is to govern others, who knows so well how to govern himself"; and when assaulted by hired assassins, he manifests courage and coolness, killing one of the bravos with his own hand. It is unnecessary to review the various stages in the Pretender's travels, which are related with a great air of mystery, but amount to nothing. The upshot is that the Prince has not renounced all thoughts of filling the throne of his ancestors, but has ends in view which the world knows nothing of and which will surprise them all some day. Had the Prince shown himself more susceptible to the charms of the merchants' daughters who fell in his way, this bit of romancing might claim the doubtful distinction of being Mrs. Haywood's only original secret history, but as it stands, no part of the story has the necessary motivation by passion. The intrigue is entirely political.
There would seem to be little dangerous stuff in this performance even five years after the insurrection of 1745, but if as the "Monthly Review" ill-naturedly hints, Eliza Haywood really suffered for her supposed connection with it, the lesson was at any rate effectual, for the small references to the P—— occasionally noticeable in her previous works suddenly ceased, and thereafter the novelist scrupulously refrained from mingling fiction and politics. Previously, however, she had at least once attempted to write a political satire elaborately disguised as a romance. In July, 1736, according to the list of books in the "Gentleman's Magazine," numerous duodecimo volumes emanated from the shop of S. Baker and were sold under the title of "Adventures of Eovaai, Princess of Ijaveo. A Pre-Adamitical History. Interspersed with a great Number of remarkable Occurrences, which happened, and may again happen, to several Empires, Kingdoms, Republicks, and particular Great Men … Written originally in the Language of Nature, (of later Years but little understood.) First translated into Chinese … and now retranslated into English, by the Son of a Mandarin, residing in London."[5]
After the introduction has given a fantastic account of the Pre-Adamitical world, and explained with elaborate unconvincingness how the manuscript of the book came into existence, the tale commences like a moral allegory, but soon lapses into mere extravagant adventure. Capable at all times of using adeus ex machinaas the readiest way of solving a situation, Mrs. Haywood here makes immoderate use of magic elements.
Eojaeu, King of Ijaveo, leaves to his daughter, Eovaai, a precious jewel, upon the keeping of which her happiness depends. One day as she is gazing at it in the garden, it slips from its setting and is carried away by a little bird. Immediately the princess is forsaken by her quarreling subjects and abandoned by her suitors, save only the wicked Ochihatou, prime minister of the neighboring kingdom of Hypotofa, who has gained ascendancy over his sovereign by black magic, caused the promising young prince to be banished, and used his power to promote his ambitions and lusts. By infernal agencies he conveys Eovaai to the Hypotofan court, where he corrupts her mind and is about to triumph in her charms when he is summoned to quell a political disturbance. The princess, left languishing in a bower, is saved by her good Genius, who enables her to discern the true deformity of her betrayer and to escape to the castle of the good Alhahuza, and ultimately into the kingdom of Oozoff, where Ochihatou's magic has no power over her. During her stay there she listens to much political theorizing of a republican trend. Ochihatou succeeds in kidnapping her, and she is only saved from his loathed embraces by discovering one of his former mistresses in the form of a monkey whom she manages to change back into human shape and substitutes in her stead. While the statesman is employed as a lover, the populace led by Alhahuza storm the palace. Ochihatou discovers the trick that has been played upon him, hastily transforms his unlucky mistress into a rat, and conveys himself and Eovaai through the air into a kingdom near at hand, where he hopes to make head against the rebels. His pretensions are encouraged, but learning by his magic that the Hypotofan monarch has been freed from the power of his spells, he persuades the princess to return to Ijaveo with him in hopes of regaining her kingdom. He transforms her into a dove, himself into a vulture, and flies with her to a wood near the Ijavean court. There he restores their natural shapes and makes a base attack upon her honor. In the struggle she manages to break his wand, and he in a fury hangs her up by the hair and is about to scourge her to death, when she is rescued by a glorious young stranger. The wicked Ochihatou dashes his brains out against an oak. Her deliverer turns out to be the banished prince of Hypotofa, who restores to her the lost jewel, weds her, and prosperously governs their united realms.
The fantastic story, however, was probably little calculated to sell the book. It was addressed to those who could read between the lines well enough to discern particular personages in the characters of the fiction, and especially a certain great man in the figure of the evil prime minister.
In 1736 when Eliza's novel first appeared, Walpole's defeated Excise Bill of 1733-4 and his policy of non-interference on the Continent had made him cordially disliked by the people, and by 1741 his unpopular ministry, like Lady Mary Montagu's stairs, was "in a declining way." Sir Robert had never shown himself a friend to letters, and there were not a few writers, among them one so illustrious as Henry Fielding, who were ready to seize upon any pretext for attacking him.[6] There can be no doubt that in the character of the villainous, corrupt, greedy, vain, lascivious, but plausible Ochihatou Mrs. Haywood intended her readers to recognize a semblance of the English minister. "Of all the statesmen who have held high office, it would be impossible to find one who has been more systematically abused and more unjustly treated than Sir Robert Walpole…. He is the 'Father of Parliamentary Corruption,' the 'foe to English liberty,' the 'man who maintained his power by the basest and most venal tactics'…. Whenever his administration is alluded to in Parliament a shudder runs through the House … at the very thought that one so sordid, so interested, so schemingly selfish, should have attained to the position of Prime Minister, and have commanded a following. If we read the pamphlet literature of the eighteenth century, we see Walpole represented as the meanest and most corrupt of mankind."[7] Lord Chesterfield says of him: "His prevailing weakness was to be thought to have a polite and happy turn to gallantry, of which he had undoubtedly less than any man living; it was his favorite and frequent subject of conversation, which proved, to those who had any penetration, that it was his prevailing weakness, and they applied to it with success."[8] And Lord Hervey reports that the Queen remarked of Walpole's mistress, "dear Molly Skerritt": "She must be a clever gentlewoman to have made him believe she cares for him on any other score [but his money]; and to show you what fools we all are in some point or other, she has certainly told him some fine story or other of her love and her passion, and that poor man—avec ce gros corps, ces jambes enflées, et ce vilain ventre—believes her. Ah! what is human nature!"[9]
With this sketch of Walpole compare the account of Ochihatou, Prime Minister of Hypotofa. "This great Man was born of a mean Extraction, and so deformed in his own Person, that not even his own Parents cou'd look on him with Satisfaction…. As he was extremely amorous, and had so little in him to inspire the tender Passion, the first Proof he gave of his Art, was to … cast such a Delusion before the Eyes of all who saw him, that he appeared to them such as he wished to be, a most comely and graceful Man.
"With this Advantage, join'd to the most soothing and insinuating Behaviour, he came to Court, and, by his Artifices, so wound himself into the Favour of some great Officers, that he was not long without being put into a considerable Post. This he discharged so well, that he was soon promoted to a better, and at length to those of the highest Trust and Honour in the Kingdom. But that which was most remarkable in him, and very much contributed to endear him to all Sorts of People, was that his Elevation did not seem to have made the least Change in his Sentiments. His natural Pride, his Lust, his exorbitant Ambition, were disguised under the Appearance of Sweetness of Disposition, Chastity, and even more Condescension, than was consistent with the Rank he then possest. By this Behaviour, he render'd himself so far from exciting Envy, that those, by whose Recommendation he had obtained what he enjoy'd, and with some of whom he was now on more than an Equality, wish'd rather to see an Augmentation, than Diminution of a Power he so well knew to use; and so successful was his Hypocrisy, that the most Discerning saw not into his Designs, till he found means to accomplish them, to the almost total Ruin of both King and People."[10] Ochihatou worms his way into the favor of the king, and after gaining complete ascendancy over his royal master, uses the power for his own ends. He fills the positions at court with wretches subservient to his own interests. "He next proceeded to seize the publick Treasure into his own Hands, which he converted not to Works of Justice or Charity, or any Uses for the Honour of the Kingdom, but in building stately Palaces for himself, his Wives, and Concubines, and enriching his mean Family, and others who adhered to him, and assisted in his Enterprizes." Lest this reference should not be plain enough in its application to Walpole's extravagances at Houghton, Mrs. Haywood adds in a footnote, "Our Author might have saved himself the Trouble of particularizing in what manner Ochihatou apply'd the Nation's Money; since he had said enough in saying, he was aPrime Minister, to make the Reader acquainted with his Conduct in that Point." Further allusions to a standing army of mercenaries and to an odious tribe of tax-collectors—two of the most popular grievances against Walpole—give additional force to the satire. There is a suspicion that in the character of the young prince banished by Ochihatou readers of a right turn of mind were intended to perceive a cautious allusion to the Pretender. [Transcriber's note: Quotes in paragraph in original, not block quote.]
That Walpole not only perceived, but actively resented the affront, we may infer, though evidence is lacking, from the six years of silence that followed the publication of the satire. Perhaps the government saw fit to buy off the troublesome author by a small appointment, but such indulgent measures were not usually applied to similar cases. More probably Eliza found it wise to seek in France or some neighboring country the safety from the malignant power of the Prime Minister that her heroine sought in the kingdom of Oozoff.
The "Adventures of Eovaai" contains almost the last of the dedications written in a servile tone to a patron whose favor Mrs. Haywood hoped to curry. Henceforward she was to be more truly a woman of letters in that her books appealed ostensibly at least only to the reading public. The victim of her final eulogy was the redoubtable Sarah, Duchess Dowager of Marlborough, who, when finding herself addressed as "O most illustrious Wife, and Parent of the Greatest, Best, and Loveliest! it was not sufficient for you to adorn Posterity with the Amiableness of every Virtue," etc., etc., may perhaps have recalled how her shining character had been blackened some twelve years before in a licentious volume called "Memoirs of a Certain Island adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia."[11] Had her Grace been aware that the reputed author of that comprehensive lampoon was none other than the woman who now outdid herself in praise, Eliza Haywood would probably have profited little by her panegyric. For though the "Memoirs of a Certain Island" like the "Adventures of Eovaai" made a pretence of being translated into English from the work of a celebrated Utopian author, the British public found no difficulty in attributing it by popular acclaim to Mrs. Haywood, and she reaped immense notoriety from it. In prefaces to some of her subsequent works she complained of the readiness of the world to pick meanings in whatever was published by a struggling woman, or protested that she had no persons or families in view in writing her stories, but she never disclaimed the authorship of this production. Undoubtedly the world was right in "smoking" the writer.[12]
If before she had retailed secret histories of late amours singly, Mrs. Haywood dealt in them now by the wholesale, and any reader curious to know the identity of the personages hidden under such fictitious names as Romanus, Beaujune, Orainos, Davilla, Flirtillaria, or Saloida could obtain the information by consulting a convenient "key" affixed to each of the two volumes. In this respect, as in the general scheme of her work, Mrs. Haywood was following the model set by the celebrated Mrs. Manley in her "New Atalantis." She in turn had derived her method from the Frenchromans à clefor romances in which contemporary scandal was reported in a fictitious disguise. The imitation written by Mrs. Haywood became only less notorious than her original, and was still well enough known in 1760 to be included in the convenient list of novels prefixed to the elder Colman's "Polly Honeycombe." It consists of a tissue of anecdotes which, if retold, would (in Fuller's words) "stain through the cleanest language I can wrap them in," all set in an allegorical framework of a commonplace kind.
A noble youth arrives upon the shores of a happy island [England], where he encounters the God of Love, who conveys him to a spacious court in the midst of the city. There Pecunia and Fortuna, served by their high priest Lucitario [J. Craggs, the elder] preside over an Enchanted Well [South Sea Company] while all degrees of humanity stand about in expectation of some wonderful event. From amid the throng the God of Love selects certain persons as examples of perverted love. The stories he relates about them range from mere anecdotes to elaborate histories containing several love-letters. In substance these tales consist of the grossest scandal that could be collected from the gossip of profligate society. After hearing more than a satiety of these illustrations, the youth beholds the Genius of the Isle, supported by Astrea and Reason, exposing the fraud of the Enchanted Well to the dismay of the greedy rabble. The young stranger then sinks to rest in a perfumed bower, while the God of Love and the Genius of the Isle set about a much needed reformation of manners.
None of the skimmings of contemporary gossip poured out in the two volumes deserves the least consideration, save such as reveal the fair writer's relations with other authors. In return for Savage's eulogy of her "Love in Excess" and "Rash Resolve" the scribbling dame included in her scandal novel the story of his noble parentage substantially as it had already been told by Aaron Hill in the "Plain Dealer" for 24 June, 1724. But in addition she prefaced the account with a highly colored narrative of the amours of Masonia and Riverius.[13] However much the author of "The Bastard" may have desired to prove his noble origin, he might easily have resented a too open flaunting of his mother's disgrace. Moreover, Mrs. Haywood hinted that his unfeeling mother was not the only woman whom the poet had to fear. By the insinuations of a female fury, a pretender to the art of poetry, for whom Eliza has no words too black—in fact some of her epithets are too shady to be quoted—he has been led into actions, mean, unjust, and wicked. The vile woman, it seems, has been guilty of defaming the reputations of others.
"The Monster whose Soul is wholly compos'd of Hipocrisy, Envy, and Lust, can ill endure another Woman should be esteem'd Mistress of those Virtues she has acted with too barefaced an Impudence to pretend to, and is never so happy as when by some horrid Stratagem she finds the means to traduce and blast the Character of the Worthy…. With how much readiness the easily deceiv'd Riverius [Savage] has obliged her in spreading those Reports, coin'd in the hellish Mint of her own Brain, I am sorry to say…. It cannot be doubted but that he has lost many Friends on her account, in particular one there was who bore him a singular Respect, tho' no otherways capacitated to serve him than by good Wishes.—This Person receiv'd a more than common Injury from him, thro' the Instigations of that female Fury; but yet continuing to acknowledge his good Qualities, and pitying his falling into the contrary, took no other Revenge than writing a little Satire, which his having publish'd some admirable fine things in the praise of Friendship and Honour, gave a handsome opportunity for." (Vol. I, p. 184.)
From the exceptional animus displayed by Eliza Haywood in describing her colleague in the school for scandal, one may suspect that the lightning had struck fairly near home. One is almost forced to believe that Savage's well-wisher, the writer of the little satire, "To the Ingenious Riverius, on his writing in the Praise of Friendship," was none other than Eliza herself.[14] Exactly what injury she had sustained from him and his Siren is not known, but although he still stood high in her esteem, she was implacable against that "worse than Lais" whom in a long and pungent description she satirized under the name of Gloatitia.
"Behold another … in every thing as ridiculous, in some more vile— that big-bone'd, buxom, brown Woman…. Of all the Gods there is none she acknowledges but Phoebus, him she frequently implores for assistance, to charm her Lovers with the Spirit of Poetry…. She pretends, however, to have an intimate acquaintance with the Muses— has judgment enough to know thateaseandpleasemake a Rhyme, and to count ten Syllables on her Fingers.—This is the Stock with which she sets up for a Wit, and among some ignorant Wretches passes for such; but with People of true Understanding, nothing affords more subject of ridicule, than that incoherent Stuff which she calls Verses.—She bribed, with all the Favours she is capable of conferring, a Bookseller [Curll] (famous for publishing soft things) to print some of her Works, ["The Amours of Clio and Strephon," 1719] on which she is not a little vain: tho' she might very well have spared herself the trouble. Few Men, of any rank whatsoever, but have been honour'd with the receipt of some of her Letters both in Prose and Measure—few Coffee-Houses but have been the Repository of them."[15]
The student of contemporary secret history does not need to refer to the "key" to discover that the woman whose power to charm Savage was so destructive to Eliza's peace of mind was that universal mistress of minor poets, the Mira of Thomson, the Clio of Dyer and Hill, the famous Martha Fowke, who at the time happened to have fixed the scandal of her affections upon the Volunteer Laureate.[16] That the poet's opinion of her remained unchanged by Mrs. Haywood's vituperation may be inferred from some lines in her praise in a satire called "The Authors of the Town," printed soon after the publication of "Memoirs of a Certain Island."[17]
"Clio, descending Angels sweep thy Lyre,Prompt thy soft Lays, and breathe Seraphic Fire.Tears fall, Sighs rise, obedient to thy Strains,And the Blood dances in the mazy Veins!….In social Spirits, lead thy Hours along,Thou Life of Loveliness, thou Soul of Song!"
But not content with singing the praises of her rival, Savage cast a slur upon Mrs. Haywood's works and even upon the unfortunate dame herself.
"First, let me view what noxious Nonsense reigns,While yet I loiter on Prosaic Plains;If Pens impartial active Annals trace,Others, with secret Histr'y, Truth deface:Views and Reviews, and wild Memoirs appear,And Slander darkens each recorded year."
After relating at some length the typical absurdities of thechronique scandaleuse—deaths by poison, the inevitably dropped letter, and intrigues of passion and jealousy—he became more specific in describing various authors. Among others
"A cast-off Dame, who of Intrigues can judge,Writes Scandal in Romance—A Printer's Drudge!Flush'd with Success, for Stage-Renown she pants,And melts, and swells, and pens luxurious Rants."
The first two lines might apply to the notorious Mrs. Manley, lately deceased, who had for some time been living as a hack writer for Alderman Barber, but she had written no plays since "Lucius" in 1717. Mrs. Haywood, however, equally a cast-off dame and a printer's drudge, had recently produced her "Fair Captive," a most luxurious rant. The passage, then, may probably refer to her.
If, as is possible, the poem was circulated in manuscript before its publication, this intended insult may be the injury complained of by Mrs. Haywood in "Memoirs of a Certain Island." Though she was content to retaliate only by heaping coals of fire upon the poet's bays, and though she even heightens the pathos of his story by relating how he had refused the moiety of a small pension from his mother upon hearing that she had suffered losses in the collapse of the South Sea scheme, Savage remained henceforth her implacable enemy. Perhaps her abuse of the divine Clio, the suspected instigator of his attacks upon her, may have been an unforgivable offense.
No need to particularize further. We need not vex the shade of Addison by repeating what Eliza records of his wild kinsman, Eustace Budgell (Bellario). No other person of literary note save Aaron Hill, favorably mentioned as Lauranus, appears in all the dreary two volumes. The vogue of the book was not due to its merits as fiction, which are slight, but to the spiciness of personal allusions. That such reading was appreciated even in the highest circles is shown by young Lady Mary Pierrepont's defence of Mrs. Manley's "New Atalantis."[18] In the history of the novel, however, theroman à clefdeserves perhaps more recognition than has hitherto been accorded it. Specific delineation was necessary to make effective the satire, and though the presence of the "key" made broad caricature possible, since each picture was labeled, yet the writers of scandal novels usually drew their portraits with an amount of detail foreign to the method of the romancers.[19] While the tale of passion developed the novelist's power to make the emotions seem convincing, thechronique scandaleuseemphasized the necessity of accurate observation of real men and women. But satire and libel, though necessitating detailed description, did not, like burlesque or parody, lead to the creation of character. In that respect the "Memoirs of a Certain Island" and all its tribe are notably deficient.
A less comprehensive survey of current tittle-tattle, perhaps modeled on Mrs. Manley's "Court Intrigues" (1711), stole forth anonymously on 16 October, 1724, under the caption, "Bath-Intrigues: in four Letters to a Friend in London," a title which sufficiently indicates the nature of the work. Like the "Memoirs of a Certain Island" these letters consist of mere jottings of scandal. Most probably both productions were from the same pen, though "Bath-Intrigues" has been attributed to Mrs. Manley.[20] Opposite the title-page Roberts, the publisher, advertised "The Masqueraders," "The Fatal Secret," and "The Surprise" as by the same author. One of Mrs. Haywood's favorite quotations, used by her later as a motto for the third volume of "The Female Spectator," stands with naïve appropriateness on the title-page:
"There is a Lust in Man, no Awe can tame,Of loudly publishing his Neighbor's Shame."
The writer of "Bath-Intrigues," moreover, did not hesitate to recommend Eliza's earlier novels to the good graces of scandal-loving readers, for she describes a certain letter as "amorous as Mrs. O—- F—-d's Eyes, or the Writings of the Author of Love in Excess." Most curious of all is the fact that the composer of the four letters, who signs herself J.B., refersen passantto Belinda's inconstancy to Sir Thomas Worthly, an allusion to the story of the second part of "The British Recluse." This reference would indicate either that there was some basis of actuality in the earlier fiction, or that Mrs. Haywood was using imaginary scandal to pad her collection. However that may be, this secondchronique scandaleusewas apparently no less successful, though less renowned, than the first, for a third edition was imprinted during the following March.