This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received 68-8810

CLEMENTS, Frances Marion, 1927- SOCIAL CRITICISM IN THE ENGLISH NOVEL: 1740-1754.

The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1967 Language and Literature, general

University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan SOCIAL CRITICISM IN THE ENGLISH NOVEL

1740- 175^

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By Frances Marion Clements, B.A., M.A.

* # * * # *

The Ohio State University 1967

Approved by (L_Lji.b A< i W L _ Adviser Department of English ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank the Library of Congress and the Folger Shakespeare Library for allowing me to use their resources. I also owe a large debt to the Newberry Library, the State Library of Ohio and the university libraries of Yale, Miami of Ohio, Ohio Wesleyan, Chicago, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin for their generosity in lending books. Their willingness to entrust precious eighteenth-century volumes to the postal service greatly

facilitated my research. My largest debt, however, is to my adviser, Professor Richard D. Altick, who placed his extensive knowledge of British social history and of the British novel at my disposal, and who patiently read my manuscript more times than either of us likes to remember. Both his criticism and his praise were indispensable. VITA

October 17, 1927 Born - Lynchburg, Virginia 1950 ...... A. B., Randolph-Macon Women's College, Lynchburg, Virginia 1950-1959• • • • United States Foreign Service

1962-1967. • • • Teaching Assistant, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1962 ...... M. A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English Literature

iii TABLE OP CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii

VITA iii Chapter I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. WOMEN Introduction Education The Rights of Wives Marriage and Freedom of Choice Economics and Employment Prostitution Afterword III. CHILDREN Education Orphans and Foundlings The Foundling Hospital The Stepchild and the Mistreated Child The Rhetoric of Pathos

IV. PRISONERS 195 V. CONCLUSION 229 BIBLIOGRAPHY 265

iv CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The novel as developed by Defoe, Richardson and Field­ ing, says Ian Watt, is "a full and authentic report of human experience, and is therefore under an obligation to satisfy its readers with such details of the story as the individuality of the actors concerned, £and] the particulars of the times and places of their actions." 1 According to Graham Hough, any novel "is obliged to represent life on the terms on which it is actually lived. . . . The extent to which novels incorporate political and social history varies greatly, but 2 they all do incorporate it." Mary McCarthy makes the same point when she remarks that "the distinctive mark of the novel is its concern with the actual world of fact, of the verifiable, of figures, even, and statistics" and that all novelists "have one thing in commons a deep love of fact, of the empiric 3 element in experience." In other words, events in a novel do not occur in an unlocalized and timeless Forest of Arden; they occur in an inn at Upton in the year 17^5. The first eighteenth-century novelists certainly intended to depict the world in which they lived. Richard­ son states that Clarissa is "addressed to the public as a

1 4 History of Life and Manners'1; Smollett in Roderick Random asserts that he has not deviated from nature in his facts, "which are all true in the main,"'’ and the anonymous author of Charlotte Summers assures the reader that he has "supposed nothing, but what, not only may happen in common Life, but what to [his^ knowledge has happened more than Once."^ Later critics recognized this realistic purpose. Fielding, Richardson, Smollett and Sterne, says Hazlitt, are among the first-class writers who "take their rank by the side of reality." In his opinion Joseph Andrews contains a more satisfactory "account of the general state of society, and of moral, political, and religious feeling in the reign 7 of George II" than does any historical document. Among twentieth-century critics, E. A. Baker praises the minor novelists of the early eighteenth century for their "gallant 8 if clumsy attempts to depict the world they lived in." Not only did the early novelists depict their world, they were also critical of their society, as their contem­ poraries and some later critics recognized. Richardson ~ q wished to "correct and mortify the Disdain of the Proud, Fielding to "expose some of the most glaring evils, as well

public as private, which at present infest the country,"10 and Smollett to "animate the reader against the sordid and 11 vicious disposition of the world." A contemporary reviewer says of Francis Coventry, author of Pompey the Little that he ridicules the world's follies "with a fineness of edge 3 12 unknown to the sour satyrist or the reoluse philosopher. 11 Even John Cleland's Fanny Hill is praised for revealing "those mysteries of iniquity that, in our opinion, need only to be exposed to view, in order to their being abhorred ahd shunned by those who might otherwise unwarily fall into 13 them." Recently Walter Allen has described Fielding, along with Hogarth, as "the most powerful artistic expres­ sion of the social conscience of the age," and believes that the greatest problem which he and Richardson saw in their world was "the existence at all levels of inordinate, arbitrary and irresponsible power against which the ordinary 14 private citizen was helpless." That all literature should have a didactic purpose was a critical principle which the eighteenth century inherited from the Renaissance. Sir Philip Sidney in his Defense of Poesie (1580) had asserted that literature, and especially drama and poetry, had two aimsj to delight and to instruct. Like most Elizabethans, he gives prime impor­ tance to instruction or moral purpose. Despite Dryden*s firm subordination of instruction to delight (Essay on Dramatic Poetry, 1688), for most eighteenth-century authors and critics didactic purpose continued to retain an impor­ tance equal to or greater than pleasure. Almost a century after Dryden's essay. Dr. Johnson said in the "Prefaces to

Shakespeare" that the "end of writing is to instruct; 11 and that "it is always a writer's duty to make the world 15 better.” Between the times of these two major writers, other men of letters asserted, either explicitly or implicitly, their didactic purpose. Farquhar in the Pro­ logue to The Beaux1 Stratagem claims that When strife disturbs, or sloth corrupts an age, Keen satire is the business of the stage. Defoe in his preface to Moll Flanders hopes that “readers will be more pleased with the moral than the fable.” In the preface to his Essay on Man Pope justifies on didactic grounds his use of verse. Principles, maxims, or precepts written in verse, he says, "both strike the reader more strongly at first, and are more easily retained by him afterwards." Swift defends his satire of the clergy on the principle that to criticize is to cure. Exposing the follies of fanaticism and superstition to ridicule he says "is perhaps the most probable way to cure them, or at least hinder them from further spreading.” The first English novelists were thus in harmony with the prevailing critical theory when they asserted their didactic purpose. But even had they had no such conscious intention, because they were realists, they could scarcely have avoided being critics as well, for realism and social criticism are nearly inseparable. The post-Edenic world is at best imperfect, and any novelist who accurately reflects that world will be obliged to expose its deficiencies; the more accurately he reflects, the more critical he will be. No novel, for example, is more scrupulously, scientifically accurate in its portrayal of the actual conditions of the world in which its characters live than is Zola's Germinal, and none is more scathing in its criticism of social evils. The requirements of realism could even force an author to take a stand on social abuses which he might in other circum­ stances wish to disclaim. Samuel Richardson, for instance, would have been very uncomfortable to find himself in the vanguard of the feminist movement. In Rambler No. 97 he deplores the necessity for marriage settlements "which makes a wife independent, and destroys love, by putting it out of a man's power to lay any obligation upon her, that might engage gratitude, and kindle affection."1^ This was written

in 17511 "but in 17^0 (Pamela) and 17*1-8 (Clarissa) Richardson had shown the unfortunate consequences of putting power over a woman into a man's hands. In both novels Richardson relates the story of a young woman's struggle to escape a hopeful rapist. Since he was writing novels rather than romances, he did not place his heroines in some country adjacent to Camelot and Immure them in a castle guarded by a dragon. He placed both of them in the everyday England

of the 17 *<«0 's, and instead of a dragon, the two heroines have to contend with such mundane social injustices as the near impossibility of a woman in that time and place earn­ ing her own living by any legal or moral means. Richardson in propria persona would not, perhaps, advocate economic independence for women, but in his novels, because they deal perforce with actual conditions, he does so in spite of himself. In general, there are two types of social criticism in any novel, both of which can be exemplified by the works of Henry Fielding. One type censures the faults inherent in unchanging human nature rather than those contemporary abuses which could be alleviated by changing a law or a social attitude. The meeting between Parson Adams and the pig-parson Trulliber in Joseph Andrews functions chiefly to criticize avarice and human hypocrisy, qualities which are attacked in the literature of any age and which no amount of legislation can cure. But elsewhere Fielding also criticizes contemporary abuses which could be changed by law or, more generally, by some other kind of social action. When he mentions that the good-hearted postillion who gave his coat to the naked freezing Joseph Andrews was later transported for pilfering a hen-roost, he points to a discrepancy between crime and punishment that could be abolished by a mere change in the law regarding petty theft." In this study, I intend to deal with the English novel as a vehicle for this second kind of social criticism during the years from the publication of Pamela in 17*K) to the TO death of Fielding in 175^. All the novels written by Fielding, Richardson and Smollett during these years are included, as well as a representative selection of works 7 by their less well-known contemporaries. The inclusion of one minor novel rather than another implies no judgment of its literary merit; quite often the choice has been dictated by nothing more than the accessibility of the books, many of which have not been reprinted since the eighteenth century. They range in quality from Mrs. Eliza Haywood*s technically proficient and relatively well-written History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless to the nearly unreadable History of Sophia Shakespear. But all of these novelists, the competent as well as the inept, consistently show a concern for three particular social problems: women's rights, the 19 treatment of children, and the conditions in British prisons. It is true that these were among the most pressing of con­ temporary social problems, and the novelists of the 17*K)'s and 1750's in their criticism of society for its mistreat­ ment of women, children and the imprisoned were numbered among many, including "the economist, the churchman, the reformer, the poet, the satirist, and the legislator each working in many related 'causes' for the change of social 20 conditions." Some critics deny that these novelists possessed any social conscience. Their opinion is expressed in its purest form by David Daiches: If a man wishes to weep literary tears he can always visit the slums and write about the miseries of the poor. But laissez-faire economics would refuse to admit that there was anything to weep about in the existence of slums and poverty, and the lachrymose emotions had to be turned inwards. 8

It was only in the nineteenth century, when the 'condition of England question' roused writers to a sense of social injustice, that these emo­ tions could once more find normal— as well as more useful— outlets. Mr. Daiches then remarks "that Fielding, like the other writers of his time, never considered that the social order as he saw it could or should be other than it was. It never occurred to him to consider the part played by social and economic conditions in producing the kind of 21 immorality he deplored." As I will show in the succeed­ ing chapters, this is simply not true, either of Fielding

or of most of the novelists who wrote between 17^0 and

175*K Social historians also are cautious about granting a very active social conscience to other groups besides the novelists because the treatment meted out to the weak and helpless, especially to women, children and prisoners, was, on the whole, brutal, as will be obvious from the following pages. Yet, paradoxically, there is justification for call­ ing this century the Age of Benevolence. During the eight­ eenth century, and especially in the years following the 17^0's, Englishmen did begin to realize that something could be done about social injustice and to act on that realiza­ tion. As G. M. Trevelyan puts it, "Humanitarianism was an Eighteenth Century product, whereas the evils it sought to 22 remedy were . . . as old as civilized man." For the first time, an influential, educated, vocal, and growing segment of the population turned its attention to the oppressed and asked what could "be done to relieve them. The oppression continued but many people no longer accepted it as a neces­ sary evil. The Georgians themselves certainly believed in their own humanitarlanism. Dr. Johnson remarked in 1758 that "the present age, though not likely to shine hereafter among the most splendid periods of history, has yet given examples of charity which may be very properly recommended to imitation. . . . no sooner is a new species of misery brought to view, and a design of relieving it professed, than every hand is open to contribute something, every tongue is busied in solicitation, and every art of pleasure is employed for a time in the Interest of virtue."2-^ Con­ temporary magazines confirm the presence, if only sporadic and limited, of this benevolence. Almost every issue of the Gentleman1s or the London Magazine for the years 17^0-

175/j. contains announcements similar to the following: A List of Deaths for the Year 1750* Mary Parker, widow, at Clapham. Surrey: she left 100 1. to the London infirmary; 300 1. for the relief of sick people; 300 1 . to bind poor children 'prentice; 300 l."”for the relief of poor widows; 200 1 . for the relief of poor men; and 300 1 . for discharging poor prisoners for debt out of jail.^

(Note that of the £1500 in legacies left by Mrs. Parker,

£900 went for the relief of women, children and imprisoned debtors. This can be regarded as a fortuitously accurate reflection of the balance of concerns in the contemporary novel. The major portion of the social abuses they criti­ 10 cize relate to these three groups.) The age’s benevolence is suggested by the proliferation of hospitals between 1700 and 1800 , all built by private voluntary contributions— a notably characteristic form of enlightened charity in the period. Before 1700 there were only two general hospitals in London, those of St. Bartholomew and St. Thomas. Between 1719 and 1750 five new ones were

founded, and by 1800 the number had risen to thirty-one. Many dispensaries and specialized hospitals, such as those for the treatment of smallpox or venereal disease, were also founded during the century,^ The Swiss traveler CSsar De Saussure was much impressed by the English willingness to give alms for this purpose. “No rich person dies without leaving large legacies," he wrote as early as 1727. “Most parishes in London and in the country have hospitals for the sick, the poor, and the aged; also charity schools where poor children are fed, taught, and clothed." He mentions particularly the hospitals founded by Thomas Gresham and by “a wealthy publisher named Guy"; but, he adds, "I should have too much to do were I to tell you of all the institutions of this sort which have been founded by private individuals." The Gentleman’s Magazine of September 17^1 devoted three and a half pages to "An Account of the Devon and Exeter Hospitals." Two years later it reported that the nobility, gentry, and clergy of Northampton met and resolved to establish a county hospital "for the benefit of the Poor, Sick and Lame of the County," and within two months the magazine recorded that 11 the project had been brought to maturity. Similar institu- 27 tions were founded at Winchester, Bath, Bristol and York. Thus, the Gentleman8s in 17^8 could say with Justifiable satisfaction, “It must certainly give great pleasure to our readers to observe by the late increase of hospitals, within, or near this metropolis, that no less than 32,552 poor diseased objects have been relieved within the compass of the last year, and it is, therefore, hoped that a deserved encouragement, and support will be continued to these best calculated and most diffusive charities" (XVIII, 198). Fielding refers to this passion for establishing hospitals when he remarks that since Allworthy had a large fortune, a good heart and no family, the reader will naturally infer "that he died immensely rich and built an hospital." Although the Allworthys of the period unquestionably were benevolent, later social historians are often reluc­ tant to approve unreservedly of eighteenth-century humani- tarianism. Rosamond Bayne-Powell1s opinion is typical of that of most social historians. If, she says, "an age is to be Judged by its treatment of the weak and helpless, the eighteenth century merits our condemnation. It must be remembered, however, that those horrible cruelties were nothing new. They had unhappily been going on all through the centuries; the new thing was that people were beginning to take notice of them and to ask each other whether they could not, and should not be prevented. The nascent humani- tarianlsm of the eighteenth century produced the great 12 pQ reforms of the nineteenth." Such caution is justified "because this "nascent humani- tarianism" was a very feeble infant that had to struggle for life in the unfriendly environment of the century’s political and philosophical conservatism. James II’s abortive attack on established institutions "gave to the hundred years that followed a legal and conservative character that was carried even to excess."2^ The Glorious Revolution so firmly estab­ lished the status quo that the Englishman simply did not think in terms of change. His political instinct was not to rock the boat; memories of the last Stuart were too recent. Nor did the philosophical attitudes of the eighteenth 30 century encourage the principle of social change. As every student of the era knows, the Georgian view of the nature of the universe combined Plato's principle of plenitude and Aristotle's theory of continuity. The principle of pleni­ tude required that a perfect creator give existence to every possible form (including every possible form of misery) be­ cause to deny existence to any would indicate jealousy of that form and, hence, imperfection in the creator. The theory of continuity required a continuous succession of forms from lowest to highest— a succession which included every possi­ ble degree of imperfection. Man, when occupying his proper place in this continuous scale of creatures, was necessarily Imperfect and should he try to attain perfection, he would break the chain. His place was mid-way between brutes and angels and "a creature so limited and so near to the other 13 animals, in kind if not in kinship, must necessarily he incapa­ ble of attaining any very high level of political wisdom or virtue, and . . . consequently no great improvement in men's political behavior or in the organization of society could be hoped for." Such a view of the nature of the universe was "a backhanded apologetic" for the status quo and very much 31 "a damper for the zeal of the reformer."^ It led Alexander Pope to assert in the Essay on Man that . . . this kind, this due degree, Of blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee. Submit! And in 1757 it led the egregious Soame Jenyns to conclude that i the sufferings of individuals are absolutely necessary to universal happiness. . . . Scarce one instance, I believe, can be produced of the acquisition of pleasure or convenience by any creatures which is not purchased by the previous consequential sufferings of themselves or others. . . . Over what mountains of slain is every mighty empire rolled up to the summit of prosperity and luxury, and what new scenes of desolation attend its fall? To what infinite toil of men, and other animals, is every flour­ ishing city indebted for all the conveniences and enjoyments of life, and what vice and misery do those very equipments introduce. Such reverence for things as they are naturally diminished the impulse to reform. By changing the established order, by relieving misery, one would leave a gap in the chain, and universal order required that there be no gaps, that "all must complete or not coherent be." In its political and philosophical theories, then, the eighteenth century was opposed or indifferent to reform; it 1^ theoretically forbade any attempt to make people less miser­ able. Nevertheless, we recall that there were efforts to help the weak and oppressed, to lift them out of their misery and hence to leave a gap in the chain. This conflict between theory and practice creates the period's paradoxical attitude toward reform. There are primarily two reasons for this conflict. When the eighteenth-century "enlightened philoso­ phers" demolished the heavenly city of traditional Christi­ anity, they destroyed also man's hope of another world where he could be recompensed for his suffering here on earth. But as Carl Becker explains in his study of this subject, "With­ out a new heaven to replace the old, a new way of salvation, of attaining perfection, the religion of humanity would appeal in vain to the common run of men." The solution of this prob­ lem was to rebuild the heavenly city in this world and aim for the perfection of the temporal life of man, and the way to perfect man's temporal life Is through social reform. A further force which worked against the philosophical disinclination to change was simply the tension that exists between human theorizing and human actions, between the general and the particular. A man may agree to the generaliza­ tion that a coherent universe full of every possible species of creature (and every misery) is justly ordained by God, but when he sees a particular debtor starving, his usual impulse is to feed him. He does not stop to think that he Is thereby destroying the coherency of the universe. When one confronts the Immediate miseries of the individual case, 15 theories tend to be forgotten. ^ Novels, of course, are concerned with the individual case. By dwelling on the particulars of the times and places in which its characters lived, the novelist made more and more people aware of evils in their society. A century after the period with which we are concerned, Trollope, speaking specifically of Dickens, paid this tribute to the novel as a force for reform: In former times great objects were attained by great work. When evils were to be reformed, reformers set about their heavy task with grave decorum and laborious argument. An age was occupied In proving a grievance, and philoso­ phical researches were printed in folio pages, which It took a life to write and an eternity to read. We get on now with a lighter step, and quicker; ridicule is found to be more con­ vincing than argument, Imaginary agonies touch more than true sorrows, and monthly novels convince when learned quartos fail to do so. If the world is to be set right, the work will be done by shilling n u m b e r s . - ^

Trollope is correct, of course; the imaginary details of the experiences of an orphan named Oliver Twist are more moving than tables of workhouse statistics in a parliamentary bluebook. The realistic novel's power as a force for reform is ultimately derived from those Imaginary details which so vividly recall to the reader’s mind the actual conditions of his world. This realism of the novel and its penchant for social criticism give rise to a series of questions which the present study will attempt to answer. One group of such questions concerns the relationship between the mid-eighteenth-century 16 novel and Its world, and the answers will help to place the novel in its social context. First, how reliable were the novelists in their reflection of the conditions which they criticize? Critics in the novel, as elsewhere In literature, are like everybody else; they are given to exaggeration to prove a point. The problem really becomes rather a Jamesian one— Just how lucid is the lucid reflector? Related to this is the question of whether fictional evidence adds to our knowledge of eighteenth-century social history. Do the novel­ ists tell us anything we cannot learn from nonfictional sources about actual conditions or about social attitudes? This leads, in turn, to the question of differences in social attitudes expressed in fictional and non-fictional sources. Are the novelists uniformly a reliable guide to contemporary opinion? At this point it will be necessary to compare in particular the attitudes of the novelists and the bluestock­ ings on the question of women's rights. The bas bleus— the Intellectual branch of the sex immediately concerned— held quite "advanced” opinions on this subject and were very critical of their age for its treatment of women. Were the novelists sympathetic to the radicalism of the blues, or did they side with the upholders of the status quo? An exami­ nation of the diaries, memoirs and letters of these women will help to answer this question. The relationship between the early novel and contemporary periodicals will also have to be considered, since the periodicals are among the most informative guides to actuil 17 conditions and to social attitudes. There were two types of periodicals in the early and middle years of the eighteenth century. The miscellany, like the Gentleman's Magazine. The True Patriot and the London Magazine included news, vital statistics and stock market quotations, as well as essays; the essay-periodical, like The Spectator. The Tatler, The Rambler, The Idler. The Covent-Garden Journal and The Female Spectator, consisted entirely of essays. These periodical essays and the novel share a concern for social betterment, and the essayist often uses both narrative and characteriza­ tion to make his point. Is the novelist merely following the lead of the essayist, or does he offer something really new and different in his criticism? The next group of questions concerns the novelists as conscious social critics and their critical methods. To what extent were the early English novels designed to be propa-* ganda, to be didactic? In other words, granted the novelists' social concern, how far does it determine the emphasis and the direction of their works? How integral to plot or character are the various social abuses and problems taken up by the novelists? How much comment is plainly extraneous to the demands of the narrative and, therefore, may be under­ stood to be conscious, pointed criticism? What are the specific techniques the novelists use to express a critical attitude toward their society? Do they comment in propria persona, or do they use dialogue or set speeches introduced as social commentary with no Immediate relevance to the plot? 18

In general, how sophisticated are the techniques of commentary- adopted at this early stage of the novel? A final question concerns the Implications of this study for a "better understanding of the new realistic fiction that developed in the middle of the eighteenth century. When compared to such fiction as existed before 17^0 , how does consideration of the immediately “post-Pamela” novel as a social document define more clearly the course the novel took in its very early stage of development? The next three chapters will present the evidence on which the answers to these questions will be based. 19

NOTES

Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novels Studies In Defoe, Richardson, and. Fielding (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959). p. 32. This dwelling on the actual facts of human experience is one aspect of what Mr. Watt calls the novel's "realism," which he distinguishes from Falubertian realism (concern with low and immoral sub­ jects) and. from Platonic realism (the belief that abstrac­ tions rather than the particular, concrete objects of sense perception are the true realities).

2Graham Hough, "From 'An Essay on Criticism,"' Critical Quarterly. VIII, No. 2 (Summer 1966), 139*

^Mary McCarthy, "The Fact in Fiction," Partisan Review, XVII (i960), 439. 4 Clarissa. Preface, Hints of Prefaces and. Post­ script, ed. R. F. Brlssenden (Los Angeles, 1964). p. 5*

^Preface to The Adventures of Roderick Random, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1925-1926), I, x.

^The History of Charlotte Summers, the Fortunate Parish Girl, 2 vols. (London, 1749), II, 152.

^"On the English Novelists," in Complete Works, ed. P. P. Howe, 21 vols. (London and Toronto, 1930-193^)» vi, 106-107.

Q The History of the English Novel. 10 vols. (New York, 1930), VI, 14.

^Introduction to "Pamela." ed. Sheridan W. Baker (Los Angeles, 1954), p . xxxvi. 1 0 Dedication to Amelia, ed. W. E. Henley, 2 vols. (New York, 1902), I, 12.

1 1 “ Preface to Roderick Random, I, ix. 20

•^Monthly Review, IV (February, 1751)* 3l6.

•^Monthly Review, II (March, 1750), 432. Accord­ ing to Peter Quennell in the Introduction to John Cleland, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (New York, 1963)* P* 8, this review refers to a bowdlerized version. 1U The English Novel (New York, 195*0* PP* 33 and 45- 1 5 ^Samuel Johnson, “Prefaces to Shakespeare," in Complete Works, l6 vols. (Troy, New York, 1903). XI, 335 and XII, 1. 1 f) Johnson, Complete Works. II, 226.

*^Swift in Examiner. No. XXXVIII, noted the dif­ ference between these two kinds of criticism: "It is very plain that considering the defectiveness of our laws, the weakness of the prerogative, or the cunning of ill-designing men, it is possible that many great abuses may be visibly commited which cannot be legally punished. . . . I am apt to think it was to supply such defects as these that Satire was first introduced into the world, whereby those whom neither religion nor natural virtue nor fear of punishment were able to keep within the bounds of their duty, might be withheld by the shame of having their crimes exposed to open view in the strongest colours, and themselves rendered odious to mankind" (The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis, 13 vols. [Oxford, 1939-1962], III, 141.

1 8 I have chosen this decade and a half for two reasons. One is that it represents the first genera­ tion of the English novel. With the exception of Sir Launcelot Greaves (1760-1762) and Humphrey Clinker (1771). all the novels of Richardson, Fielding and Smollett were published during these years (Pamela. 1740; Joseph Andrews, 1742; Jonathan Wild, 1743; Clarissa, 1747-1746; Roderick Random^ 1748; Tom Jones, 1749; Peregrine Pickle, 1751; Amelia. 1751; Ferdinand Count Fathom, 1753; Sir Charles Grandison, 1753-1754). 21

Secondly, by beginning with Pamela, I avoid having to arbitrate between Mr. Watt and Mrs. Van Ghent as to whether Defoe was really a novelist or not. These years represent the first generation of undisputed novels.

■^Mrs. Kathleen Tillotson's statement in her Novels of the Eighteen-Forties (Oxford, 195*0* P* v, would seem to apply here. My study "is not what is sometimes called a 'decade study1; I do not refer to all the main pre­ occupations of the time, but only to those that seem especially relevant to the novels."

90 Frank J. Klingberg, "The Evolution of the Human­ itarian Spirit in Eighteenth-Century England," Pennsyl­ vania Magazine of History and Biography, LXVI (19^2), 2So: 21 David Daiches, Literature and Society (London, 1938). P* 151 and p. 156, note 1. For a similar opinion, see Sir Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols. (Reprinted New York and Burlingame, 1962), II, 323. 22 G. M. Trevelyan, History of England. 3rd ed. (New York, London, Toronto, 19*h5). P* 526.

2^Johnson, Idler, No. in Complete Works. V, 73.

2^Gentleman1s Magazine, XX (March, 1750), 139.

2'’David Owen, English Philanthropy; 1660-1960 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 19^4), pp. 37 and 52-53*

* 26Cesar DeSaussure, A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I and II, translated and edited by Madame Van Muyden (London, 1902), pp. 185-186.

27Gentleman»s Magazine, XI (17*+l), W ; XIII (17^3). 496, 6id and 64o. 22

98 Rosamond Bayne-Powell, The English Child In the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1939)7 p."'W.

2^G. M. Trevelyan, Illustrated English Social History, A vols. (London, New York, Toronto, 19^-9- 1952), III, 70.

■^°In the following discussion, I rely heavily on A. J. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Reprinted New York, i960), especially chapters VI and VII; and on Basil Willey, The Eighteenth Century Background (London, 19*K>).

-^Lovejoy, pp. 203-20^.

^2Soame Jenyns, "A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil,” Miscellaneous Pieces in Verse and Prose. 3rd ed. (London, 1770), pp. 279-280.

•^Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth- Century Philosophers (New Haven, 1932), p. 129.

-^Basically, of course, the prevalence of this particular foim of benevolence in the eighteenth century is due to the great influence of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Latitudinarian divines who believed that man is innately good-natured. Their beliefs underlay much of the eighteenth-century’s theorizing about the nature of man, and their influence is clearly seen in the works of the third Earl of Shaftesbury, an extremely popular author with eighteenth- century readers. The Latitudinarians held that the good- natured man, the one who had attained the highest form of morality, exhibited an active concern for the suffer­ ings of his fellow man, as does Fielding's Parson Adams. For a discussion of Latitudinarian influence on the thought of the period, see Martin Battestin, The Moral Basis of Fielding's Art; a Study of "Joseph Andrews” (Middletown, Connecticut, 1959)* Chapter 2. "Good iiature," says Mr. Battestin, "or rather its specific manifestation in comprehensive and energetic charity, became the core of latitudinarian Christianity, which had as its goal the practical betterment of society no less than the salvation of individual souls” (17). 23

•^ Anthony Trollope, The Warden, ed. Michael Sadleir and Frederick Page (London, New York, Toronto, 1952), pp. 205-206. CHAPTER II

WOMEN

INTRODUCTION The debate over woman’s rights probably began with Aristotle and Plato, as, according to William James, did almost every other subject of importance to western man. In the fifth book of The Republic, Socrates forces Glaucon

to agree to this community of women with men in education, in the care of children and guardian­ ship of the other citizens, and that they must both remain in the city and go out to war, guard and hunt with the men like dogs, and as far as possible take their full share in every­ thing, and that by so doing their actions will be most desirable and not contrary to the natural relations of male and female or their natural community. He gives women, in effect, full equality— the same privi­ leges and the same duties as men have. Aristotle, less generous, stated in Book I, chapter 13 of the Politics that "the courage and justice of a man and of a woman, are not, as Socrates maintained, the same; the courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman of obeying." Throughout the years from Aristotle and Plato to Richardson's Pamela one can find only sporadic signs of interest in whether the man or the woman shall rule the 24 25. roost. The Romans gave us Juvenal’s vituperative Sixth Satire, which "lavishes the most extravagant Invective on the new woman,"1 and they also contributed Petronius' Trimalchio, a man so henpecked that if his wife Fortunata "tells him at high noon-it's dark, he’ll agree." In medieval literature we have Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, a staunch fighter for woman's maistrie, and from the Renaissance come Shakespeare's Beatrice and Benedict who never do settle the vexed question of who is going to be boss. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, many people had begun to show a sustained and serious interest in women and their rights, and among these were the first gener­ ation of English novelists. These writer^ concern with the problems of women is clear merely from the titles of their works. Clarissa, Pamela, Amelia, Charlotte Summers, Lucy Wellers, Sophia Shakespear, Honoria, Felicia, Patty Saunders, Fanny Hill, Betsy Thoughtless, Jenny Jessamy and Cornelia are all eponymous heroines. Furthermore, even when a heroine’s name is not part of a title, her problems often occupy a major portion of the author's attention. Sophia Western, for example, is as much a victim of parental tyranny as is Clarissa Harlowe. Both suffer because of their age’s disregard of a woman's right to choose her own husband. The popularity of distressed heroines goes back, of course, to the beginnings of the courtly love tradition in western literature. By giving women a prominent role to 26 play, the traditional love plot accounts in part for the heavy

emphasis in the eighteenth-century novel on their problems, but the consistency with which the novelists criticize the more flagrant injustices committed against women suggests a conscious critical purpose. As a result of this emphasis, the reading public must have become increasingly aware of the plight of women— or of middle-class women, at any rate. Most of the heroines whose problems we follow in the eighteenth-century novel are the daughters of clergymen, military officers, merchants, wealthy tradesmen or country squires. Those like Patty Saunders or Mrs. Haywood's Louisa 2 in The Fortunate Foundlings who seem to be of unknown or of lower-class origin always turn out to be the children of someone in the middle class. Pamela seems at first to be an exception, but as Robert Utter and Gwendolyn Needham have shown, in spirit she is really a middle-class lady dressed 3 in maid-servant's clothes. Her education, her gentility, her sensibility, her morality, her principles of decorum and chastity are all those of the middle class. A. R. Humphreys attributes the eighteenth-century's interest in women's rights to "the steady emergence of the plainer morality of the middle class [which] tended toward k the recognition of feminine equality." As Ian Watt has shown, the novel developed in answer to the demands of a growing middle-class reading public, and thus it is only natural that the middle-class* genre should reflect the middle-class* interests.^ 27

The decades before and after 1760 were the heyday of the famous bluestockings, women like Hester Chapone, Mrs. Delany, Elizabeth Montagu and Elizabeth Carter, who did so much to prove that women were rational creatures and fit associates for even the exalted circle of Dr. Johnson. During these years, according to Myra Reynolds, there was "a destruction of old placidities, a restlessness of discussion" which "gave tremendous impetus, if not to actual learning yet to the idea that a woman should have sense, intelligence, a wide knowl­ edge of books, and an understanding of history and current £ affairs." After 1 7 6 0 , says H. D. Traill, there was "a marked improvement in the position of women with intellectual and social abilities. Their interests were no longer con- 7 fined to amusements, domestic economy and dress."' At the beginning of the century, notions of the nature of women were still rather primitive. As late as 1696 one lady felt obliged to assert at some length her belief that women had souls Just as men did. She argues that "all Souls are equal, and alike, and that consequently there is no such Q distinction, as Male and Female souls." As the century progressed, however, more and more people commented with tolerance on women's right to equality. Daniel Defoe in his Essay upon Projects proposed a female academy, which would provide for women an education similar to that of men. (The feminist Mary Astell had made a similar proposal in 1 6 9 4.) Defoe's contemporary. Sir Richard Steele, who emerges as one of the eighteenth century's most endearing champions of women, 28 notes in Tatler 172 that in their everyday behavior women "are not more trivial than the common rate of men; and in my opin­ ion, the playing [sic] of a fan is every whit as good an enter- 9 tainment as the beating of a snuff box." In essence, Steele says that if women are often silly, not to say absurd, so are men. In Spectator 534 he includes a letter from a young girl of nineteen which neatly sums up the problem of the reason­ ably sensible woman of the time. She writes, "Our House is frequented by Men of Sense, and I love to ask Questions when I fall into such Conversation, but I am cut short with some­ thing or other about my bright Eyes. There is, Sir, a Lan­ guage particular for talking to women; and none but those of the very first good Breeding (who are very few and who seldom come into my wiay) can speak to us without regard to our Sex."10 The feminist discussion developed into a minor paper weir in 1739 with the appearance of the so-called Sophia Pamphlets, beeiring the kind of long descriptive title of which the eight­ eenth century was so fond. Sophia’s real name we do not know, though some have speculated that she may have been Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.11 Her first pamphlet was called Woman not inferior to Man: or a short and modest vindication of the natural right of the fair sex to a perfect equality of power, dignity and esteem with the men. By Sophia a person of quali­ ty. Sophia criticizes the faulty education of women and demands for them an equal educational opportunity with men and admission to all professions, even to their becoming "ministers of state, vice-queens, governesses [i.e., female 29 governors], etc." Sophia was answered almost Immediately by the anonymous Man superior to Woman: containing a plain confu­ tation of the fallacious arguments of Sophia In her late Treatise lntltled Woman not Inferior to Man. In true feminine fashion, however, Sophia had the last word. She replied in 17^0 with Womans superior excellence over Man or a reply to the author of a late treatise entitled Man superior to Woman. In which the excessive weakness of that Gentleman’s answer to Woman not Inferior to Man is exposed. These three pamphlets were published together In 1751» as Beauty’s Triumph. By the middle of the century, other women besides Sophia were discussing their rights. Mrs. Delany, writing to her sister Anne Dewes, is extremely critical of parents who leave fortunes to their sons and beggar their daughters in the process. "Young men," she remarks, "have a thousand ways of improving a little fortune, by professions and imployments, if they have good friends, but young gentlewomen have no way, the fortune settled on them is all they are to expect— they 12 are incapable of making an addition." In 1750 the bluestocking Hester Mulso (later to be Mrs. Chapone) wrote to Samuel Richardson three Letters on Filial Obedience in which she argues that "though men’s ways are unequal, the ways of God are equal, and with him even women shall find justice." To her, it is custom, not God or nature, that makes daughters more dependent on parents than their brothers are and which forbids daughters’ leaving home 13 and earning their own living. J 30

Many novelists between 17^0 and 175^ deal with the prob­ lem of women*s rights, but Richardson's three novels, Pamela. Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandlson. are among the most out­ spokenly feminist works that the eighteenth century produced. In Sir Charles Grandlson. Harriet Byron's grandmother, Mrs. Shirley, addresses herself to the same problem as Steele's young lady who complained that there was "a Language particular for talking to women." Women, says Mrs. Shirley, "are generally too much considered as a species apart .... In common intercourse and conversation, why are we to be perpetually considering the Sex of the person we are talking to? Why must women always be addressed in an appropriated language; and not treated on the common footing of reasonable Ik creatures?" In this novel and In Clarissa Richardson also takes up the matter of parental preference for sons over daughters. Sir Thomas Grandlson, Sir Charles* father, taking a position of which the author obviously disapproved, had "often declared, that, were he to have entire all the fortune that descended to him from his father, he would not give to his daughters, marry whom they would, more than £5.000 apiece" (II, 37). and his refusal to give his daughter Caroline a dowry is the obstacle to her marriage with Lord L— , whom she loves (II, 58). On coming into his inheritance after his father's death, the first act of Sir Charles, the perfect man, is to give his sisters "an absolute Independence of your brother, that your actions and conduct may be all your own" (II, 130). 31

Like Sir Thomas, Clarissa*s despicable brother James holds "That Daughters were but incumbrances and drawbacks upon a family" and that "a man who has Sons brings up chickens for his own table, . . , whereas Daughters are chickens brought up for the tables of other men. Both James and Sir Thomas are unsympathetic characters, and the reader is meant to see them as misguided, if not downright malicious. As a result of his compassionate treatment of their problems, many women came to consider Richardson as their particular champion; thus, when he occasionally slipped into anti-feminist senti­ ments. they were not slow to point the fact out to him. Sir Charles agrees, for instance, that if he marries the Lady Clementina della Porretta of Bologna, she can educate their daughters as Catholics, but the sons must be brought up as Protestants (III, 32). To Mrs. Delany, this is the only blot on Sir Charles' character, and she remarks, "Had a woman written the story, she would have thought the daughters of as much consequence as the sons, and when I see Mr.

Richardson I shall call him to an account for that faux-

EDUCATION Besides conducting a sustained discussion of equality in general, and the Injustice of relegating women to second- class citizenship, the eighteenth century began to recognize that ignorance was partially responsible for their inferior position. Then, as now, reformers often saw education as the 32 cure for the ills of any oppressed group. Unfortunately, during most of the century the education of women was carried on by what Steele called an 11 unaccountable wild method" (Tatler 6l). "I could name you twenty families," he says, "where all the girls hear of in this life is that it is time to rise and to come to dinner; as if they were so insignifi­ cant as to be wholly provided for when they are fed and cloathed" (Tatler, 2^8). When the century began, the ultra­ feminist Mary Astell had proposed going so far as to establish a college for women, but even she did not advocate educating them for the professions, believing that "women have no busi- 17 ness with the Pulpit, the Bar or St. Stephens Chapel." When the century ended, Mary Wollstonecraft, recognizing that from a practical point of view education was the most impor- tan right denied to women, was demanding that they be admitted to education for all professions, even including medicine. In the years between Astell and Wollstonecraft, a number of men and women, including the earliest English novelists, had been pointing out the inadequacy of woman’s education, the injus­ tice of expecting her to be intelligent and virtuous by the sheer force of unaided nature, the advantages that would accrue to the nation (and especially to her husband) if she were allowed to acquire some smattering of knowledge, and the pettiness of the opposition to her education. According to contemporary comments, a woman’s schooling consisted of learning those arts necessary first to get a husband and then to keep him happy by her efficient manage- 33 ment of his household. The "finished" young lady, ready for husband-hunting at Bath, Ranelagh and Vauxhall, could "exe­ cute a few old airs upon the spinet, dance a minuet . . . and possibly sing one or two of the Italian songs from the foreign 18 operas which were . . . popular in England." The Italian I traveler Baretti notes this passion for music on the part of young English women and ungallantly commented that thousands of them sang, but only about a dozen had passable voices. The English, he believed, "fight against nature Itself in 19 making [music^ the chief element in a woman’s education." Hannah More disagreed with Baretti; she claimed that dancing, not music, was the chief element, and learning to dance proper- 20 ly required four separate tutors. In addition to these dubious accomplishments, a young woman was taught "to sew and to make baubles," as Defoe calls 21 them. The time devoted to dancing, music, sewing and baubles was, of course, just so mubh time deducted from learn­ ing to read, write, and use the mind— and one mother of the times objected to this emphasis on frivolous matters. Susannah Wesley believed that teaching girls needlework at an early age was "the very reason why so few women can read fit to be heard, 22 and never to be well understood," and she never allowed her daughters to learn to sew until they had become proficient readers. But Mrs. Wesley’s sense of the fitting was evident­ ly not that of the world at large. In 173^ Swift received a letter from Miss Hoadly, daughter of Archbishop Benjamin

Hoadly, and finding it to be "written in a fair hand, rightly

I 3^ spelt, and good plain sense,1' he ironically questioned both 23 her fashionableness and her gentility. Any kind of accom­ plishment beyond music, dancing, sewing and "baubles" was evidently outstanding enough to be memorialized. A rector in the middle of the century, for Instance, wished his wife remembered for her learning (among other things): She was truely Religious, Meek in Apprehension, Expert in Geographie, 2l, Compassionate and Charitable. The novelists, meanwhile, by making their heroines dignified and intelligent women, and by sometimes making them admired for their intellects, were implicitly assert­ ing a woman’s right to an education. They quite often asserted it explicitly also, maintaining that a woman had every right to learn whatever her capabilities allowed. In these assertions, they opposed conservative opinion, which is best expressed in Book V of Rousseau's Emile (a work against which Mary Wollstonecraft was to direct her most passionate criticism). A woman's education [says Rousseau] must there­ fore be planned in relation to man. To be pleasing to his sight, to win his respect and love, to train him in childhood, to tend him in manhood, to counsel and console, to make his life pleasant and happy, these are the duties of woman for all time, and this is what she should be taught while she is young.2 *

Women, in effect, are meant to be passive and submissive— and should be educated for this role. Pamela was written twenty-two years before Emile, which was published in English translation in 1?62, but Rousseau's theory of 35 female education was prevalent enough in England in 17^0 for Pamela to object to just the sort of attitude he holds. Women, she says, are forced to struggle for Knowledge, like the poor feeble Infant in the Month, who . . . is pinned and fettered down upon the Nurse’s Lap; and who, if its little Arms happen, by Chance to excape its Nurse’s Observation, and offer but to expand themselves, are immediately taken into Custody.^and pinn’d down to their passive Behaviour. b All of Richardson's heroines are formidable pen-women and they read voraciously. Pamela had been taught original­ ly by her father, a former schoolmaster, and then Squire B's mother "had put [her] to write and cast Accounts." Her learning was, she thought, so extensive that not every family could have found employment for her that was worthy of her abilities (I, 1). After her marriage, she reads Locke's treatise on education and not only understands it, but is presumptuous enoughrto take issue with several of that philosopher's statements (IV, 299-371)• Anne Howe devotes some fifteen pages to recounting the accomplishments of her dead friend Clarissa. Besides the usual skills in music, needlework, and household management, Clarissa had an impressive list of other accomplishments: she was an expert with her pen and a graceful reader in English, French, or Italian; she could draw, was an extraordinary Judge of painting, and had read the best translations of the Latin classics (VIII, 22^-239). It Is, however, in his last novel that Richardson most Insists upon the importance of a woman's mind. Sir Charles Grandison finds it the principle charm in a female. 111 had never," he says, "left MIND out of my notions of Love" (III, 12), and her mind is what attracts him to Harriet Byron, as he reiterates on almost every possible occasion. "But I am afraid," he remarks at one point, "that few see in that admirable young Lady what I see in her: A mind great and noble" (II, 290). To his sister he observes that "those who leave mind out of the description of Miss Byron . . . are not to describe her . . . . Have you not observed, Charlotte, . . . what intelligence her very silence promises? And yet, when she speaks, she never disappoints the most raised expectations" (II, 209). Upon introducing his friend Beauchamp to Miss Byron, he admonishes him, "But let not your admiration stop at her Pace and Person: She has a Mind as exalted, my Beauchamp,

as your own" (III, 3 6 5). While asserting that a woman has a mind, many novelists also go so far as to maintain that she may have just as good a one as her brother or husband, and the novel reading public must have become accustomed to the notion that it was unjust to prohibit her from using it. Fielding's Jenny Jones, for Instance, had "a very uncommon share of understanding" which she "had a good deal improved by erudition." By the time she was evicted from the Patridge household, she had acquired "a competent skill in the Latin language, and was, perhaps, as good a scholar as most of the young men of quality of the 27 age." 1 Harriet Byron also believes in equality of intellect 37 between the sexes. She remarks to her friend Lucy Selby that "There is not . . . so much difference in the genius's of the two Sexes as the proud ones among theirs are apt to imagine"

(I, 2 9 5). In The History of Lucy Wellers, Mrs. Minter recalls that as a young girl she was told "that a woman that was fond of reading could be good for nothing else." She confesses that she is puzzled to "comprehend how the improvement of the understanding could have so contrary an effect in one sex from what it is allow'd to have on the other" and expresses her belief in the necessity "for every one to endeavour to 28 cultivate her understanding, as far as lies in her power." Sarah Fielding in David Simple goes even further than to claim the intellectual equality of women; she makes her Cynthia much more suited to learning than her brother. The brother hated to study and had to be whipped to his books, while Cynthia, who avidly desired any kind of learning, was for­ bidden to read merely because she was a girl. The injustice of the situation could not be clearer. ", . . whenever I asked any Questions of any kind whatsoever £says Cynthia^, I was always told, such Things were not proper for Girls of my Age to know. If I got any Book that gave me pleasure, and it was any thing beyond the most silly Story, it was taken from me. For Miss must not enquire too far into things— it would turn her Brain— she had better mind her Needle work— and such Things as were useful for Women— Reading and poring on Books would never get me a H u s b a n d . 9

The necessity for getting a husband, as Cynthia's family is aware, was considered in the eighteenth century as one important reason for not educating women. No man, presum- 38 ably, would welcome a pedant by the fireside, or a critic at the breakfast table— such, at least, was Dr. Johnson*s theory. "Men," he told Bosxiell, "know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves."3® Letitla

Pilkington's experience with her husband confirms Dr. Johnson's opinion. The Reverend Matthew Pilkington of Dublin was un­ believably petty and vicious. He was jealous of his wife's friendship with Swift, jealous of anything she did better than he; and he delighted in showing his resentment before outsiders. When he left home for any length of time, he locked up the tea and coffee or locked the gate to the garden so that she and their children could not get into it. On two occasions she managed to rouse Matthew's envious ire with her accomplishments: once when Mr. Smith told Matthew that Letitla could write better poems than he could and again when Swift tactlessly told him that "were your wife and you to sit for a fellowship, I would give her one sooner than adiiit you a sizar." Letitla acidly passes on to her readers the wisdom she gleaned from this unfortunate experience: And here let me seriously advise every lady who has the misfortune to be poetically turned never to marry a poet .... And if a man cannot bear his friend that should write, much less can he endure it in his wife: it seems to set them too much upon a level with their lords and masters; and this I take to be the true reason why even men of sense discountenance learning in women, and commonly choose for mates the most illiterate and stupid of the sex; and then bless their stars fehat their wife is not a wit. 39 It is unfair to Judge all men by the egregious Matthew Pilkington, and I find it unlikely that sensible men in the eighteenth century preferred downright idiocy to intelligence in a woman. There were some people, however, who agreed with Dr. Johnson that men did prefer idiots. Dr. John Gregory, Scots physician and friend of Akenside, Hume, Beattie, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and other notables, in his Legacy to his daughters warns them that wit is the most dangerous talent they can possess and that even good sense should be displayed with caution. Most dangerous of all for women is learning, which should be kept "a profound secret, especial­ ly from the men, who generally look with a Jealous and malig­ nant eye on a woman of great parts, and a cultivated under­ standing."^2 Lord Chesterfield praises Lady Hervey (wife of Pope’s Sporus) because although she understands Latin perfect- 33 ly, she "wisely conceals it."-^ In all three of Richardson's novels male Jealousy is recognized as a problem with which the educated woman jjust cope. Pamela laments to Mr. B. that "when a poor Girl, in spite of her narrow Education, breaks out into Notice, her Genius is immediately tamed by trifling Imployments, lest, perhaps, she should become the Envy of one Sex, and the Equal of the other" (IV, 320). Anna Howe, in the midst of listing Clarissa's accomplishments, stops to express her own opinion that women are inferior to men in nothing "but in want of opportunities, of which the narrowminded mortals industriously seek to deprive us, lest we should surpass 4-0 them as much in what they chiefly value themselves upon, as we do in all the graces of a fine imagination" (VIII, 22?). And Harriet Byron recognizing the hypocrisy imposed on a woman who must conceal her learning, says, "If we have some little genius, and have taken pains to cultivate it, we must be thought guilty of affectation, whether we appear desirous to conceal it, or submit to have it called forth" (I, 72). Later, she writes to Lucy Selby a parody of a letter from the Oxford pedant Mr, Walden, in which that gentleman expresses his unflattering opinion of the feminine Intellect. The gist of it is that women had best keep silent before their betters (I, 101), but Richardson has already shown the reader how Harriet gets the better of Mr. Walden in an argument. The natural consequence of depriving women of an educa­ tion was that they were quite often empty-headed and vain. One could not Justly blame them for this when they seldom had an opportunity to be otherwise, as Defoe saw so clearly: We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence, [he says^ while I am confident, that had they the advantages of education equal to us they would be guilty of less than ourselves. One would wonder Indeed how it should happen that women are conversible at all, since they are only beholden to their natural growth for all their k n o w l e d g e .3^

Folly and impertinence in a woman are the characteristics of a coquette. The long interpolated story of Leonora in Joseph Andrews serves to introduce the reader to Just this kind of creature. Leonora is so flighty that her head is 41 turned by a coach and six driven by the dashing Bellarmine,

As a result, she gives up her lover Horatio for the pleasure of making every woman at a ball jealous, "She had before known what it was to torment a single woman; but to be hated and secretly cursed by a whole assembly was a joy reserved for this blessed moment [when Bellarmine singles her out for attention]." She weighs the rival merits of Horatio and Bellarmine and decides that "by marrying Bellarmine, I shall be the envy of all my acquaintance," Naturally, she is deserted by Bellarmine and ends her story broken in heart and in reputation. Fielding attributes her behavior to her two suitors to "that blameable levity in the education of [her] sex."-^ If a faulty education was responsible for folly in women, presumably a good education could lead them to virtue. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Dr, Johnson and Elizabeth Montagu certainly believed this. Learning, says Lady Mary, "is neces­ sary to the happiness of women, and ignorance the common foundation of their errors, both in morals and conduct"; ignorance could, and often did, lead them to "fall into 37 Vapours or something worse.Dr. Johnson believed that wealthy women were more virtuous than their poorer sisters simply because they had a better education, and he told Boswell that wives in his day "were more faithful to their husbands, and more virtuous in every respect, than in former times, because their understandings were better cultivated."-^® Elizabeth Montagu also saw the connection between virtue and 42 intelligence. “Sure," she remarks, “the men are very imprudent to endeavour to make fools of those to whom they so much trust their honour and happiness and fortune, hut it is in the na­ ture of mankind to hazard their peace to secure power, and 3 0 they know fools make the best slaves." 7 The heroine who most effectively illustrates the connection between vice and ignorance is Miss Frances Hill, who says: My education till past fourteen, was no better than very vulgar; reading, or rather spelling, an illegible scrawl, and a little ordinary plain work composed the whole system of it; and then all my foundation in virtue was no ^0 other than a total ignorance of vice ....

THE RIGHTS OF WIVES

Many people in the eighteenth century, especially the novelists, were also extremely critical of their age’s attitude toward the "rights of wives." The prevailing conservative opinion was probably most succinctly expressed in 1688 by the Marquis of Halifax in The Lady’s New Year’s Gift: or. Advice to a Daughter, an extremely popular work which went through fifteen editions before 1?65. Here he advises his daughter to "lay it down for a Foundation in general that there is Inequality in the Sexes" and "that the supposition of yours being the weaker Sex, having without all doubt a good Foundation, maketh it reasonable to subject it to the Masculine Dominion." Just what this masculine dominion entails is then explained under five main headings. First, her husband may be an adulterer, but there is a double ^3 standard of sexual morality which makes "that in the utmost degree Criminal in the Woman which in a Man passeth under a much gentler Censure.11 Secondly, he may be a drunk and; third, he may be ill-humored; fourth, covetous and fifth, weak and incompetent. Halifax grants that the situation is difficult, and his only solution to all of these problems is to advise his daughter to close her eyes to any faults she sees in her husband because there is nothing else she can do. “You are, therefore," he tells her, "to make your best of what is settled by law and custom, and not vainly *KL imagine that it will be changed for your sake." Since women are Inferior by nature, law, and custom, their only recourse is to accept this fact. Halifax*s daughter was to become the mother of Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield, and one cannot help wondering how many of Chesterfield's notoriously unflattering opinions about women were acquired from his maternal grandfather. Marriage was of more importance to the eighteenth-century woman than it is to her twentieth-century descendant because unless she were rich enough to be independent, she could not afford to remain single. I intend to discuss later the economic plight of the woman, but for now suffice it to say that she was almost completely debarred from earning her own living by any legal means. If she were not to starve, she had to marry. As Mrs. Delany impatiently asks, Why must women be driven to the necessity of marrying? a state that should always be a matter of choice! and if a young woman has not fortune sufficient to maintain her in the station she has been bred to, what can she do, but marry? and to avoid living either very obscurely or running into debt, she accepts of a match with no other view than that of interest. Has not this made matrimony an irksome prison to many, and prevented its being that happy union of hearts where mutual choice and mutual obligation wake it the most perfect state of friendship?"^2 She spoke from experience. Her first marriage to Mr. Pendarvis, which had been a most unhappy one, had been motivated by eco­ nomic necessity. Other bluestockings, for all their insist­ ence on woman's equality, also recognized the practical necessity of marriage. Anne Donnellan wrote in 17^2 to Elizabeth Robinson (later to become Elizabeth Montagu), if you meet with a person who you think would be proper to make you happy in the married state, and they show a desire to please you, and a solidity in their liking, give it the proper encouragement that the decency of our sex will allow of, for it is the settlement in the world we should aim at, and the only way we females have of making ourselves of use to,society and raising ourselves in this world. More romantically, the Female Spectator, an eighteenth- century version of the Ladles' Home Journal, calls mar- hh riage "the fountain-head of all the comforts we can enjoy." The novelists, too, saw the importance to women of marriage. Henry Fielding calls love "that great and important Business of [women*s|] lives," meaning by "love" the emotion which leads to a respectable marriage. One of the more prominent virtues of Richardson's perfect Sir Charles Grandlson is his ability as a "matrimony-promoter," as his sister Charlotte calls him (III, 333)• Before this long ^5 novel is over, Sir Charles has not only himself married Harriet Byron, he has also arranged the marriages of his uncle, his two sisters, his wife’s servant, and six comparative strangers. Harriet’s own family also believes in the importance of mar­ riage for a woman. Her grandmother Shirley's one wish is to see her granddaughter ‘'happy in a worth man’s protection" (II, 23), and her uncle Selby avers that "a woman out of wedlock is half useless to the end of her being" (I, 30). Necessary as marriage may have been, the legal status of wives was unenviable. As Blackstone put its By marriage, . . . the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended . . . , or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing; and is therefore called in our law- french a feme-covert.

So completely was a wife subject to her husband that if she murdered him, she was technically guilty of "petit treason" rather than of simple murder and could be burned at the stake. As late as 17^8, a woman named Mary Cornelius Beyley was executed under this law, which was not abolished 4-7 until 1790. In practice this lack of legal rights meant that a married woman could not own property, either real or personal; she could not make a will without her husband’s consent, and he could revoke that consent at any time; in the unlikely event that she should be able to earn any money, it belonged to him, as did her savings; and she could not even be bailed out of prison without his consent. In the eyes of the law, their children were his, and he 46 could take them away from her at any time and refuse to let her see them; she could not give evidence against him, even In case of assault upon herself. In short, a wife's legal rights were about commensurate with those of the household dog--her husband, however, could not murder her with impunity, as he could his dog. But if he did kill her, he was hanged, 48 not burned at the stake. Under these conditions, marriage for a woman could be a very uncertain affair, as many people in the eighteenth century recognized. Dr. Johnson considered that it was 4 0 "very often the cause of misery" 7 and "wondered why young women should marry, as they have so much more freedom, and so much more attention paid to them while unmarried, than when married."^0 Letitia Pilkington, speaking from exper­ ience, believed that "married persons, even in the happiest wedlock, which is at best but tolerable, look back with secret regret on the sweet hours of freedom," and she wonders too at the "strange infatuation" that could ever 51 lead a widow to remarry. The problem, of course, was that the disadvantageous legal position of women gave too much opportunity for the kind of tyranny which Hester Chapone called "the triumph of low minds, and almost the sure consequence of power in 52 the hands of a fool." Not all, or even most, men are either fools or low minded, but some of them are. If a woman did marry a conscientious and reasonable companion, she had a fairly good chance of being happy, according to 4?

Mrs. Delany, who had experience of "both kinds. Otherwise, she says, "the common casualties of [married^) life are . . . intolerable." The plight of the wife was of enough topical interest for the magazines to frequently discuss it, either in letters to the editor or in short vignettes, the equivalent of the twentieth-century magazine short story. These letters and stories often present the wife's side sympathetically, obviously with the intention of criticizing the husband's behavior. Unfortunately, they seldom offer any practical solution beyond Lord Halifax's pious exhortation to make the best of things. The eighteenth-century journalists had come to recognize that something was very wrong, but did not go so far as to suggest that curtailing the husband's power might alleviate the problem. Amelia writes to the Spectator Column of the Gentleman's Magazine complaining that because her husband married her in spite of her small fortune, he seems to feel that his concession gives him "the undoubted Liberty of acting in what Manner he thinks proper, and a Right of behaving in a tyrannical Manner." Mr. Spec­ tator's helpful reply is to hope that "Amelia may find an alteration in her husband's conduct" (X, 6 9). Most issues of the Female Spectator, the magazine for and about women, carry stories of unhappy wives victimized by their husbands. Alithea and Zimene both find that their husbands are adulterers, but Mrs. Spectator can only recommend that they imitate the patient Griselda. "What can I do [afcks ^8

Alithea], but endeavour to render myself more obliging. more pleasant, more engaging. If possible, than m.v rival, and make Dorimon see, he can find nothing In Melissa that Is wanting In me11 (I, 300). Her behavior is recommended to the readers as "good sense." Zimene refused to be a Griselda and, says Mrs. Spectator, her conduct "may shew our sex how little is to be got by violence, and a too haughty resentment:— patience, and a silent enduring an infringement on those rights which marriage gives us over the heart and person of a husband, is a lesson, which, I confess is difficult to practise; yet, if well observed, seldom fails of bringing on a sure reward:— " (III, 25). The majority of the novels used in this study are love stories, and since most love stories stop at the altar, the plight of the wife is seldom the theme of any novel— heroines are conventionally presumed to live happily ever after. (Mrs. Haywood's Betsy Thoughtless is an exception, nearly half of it being devoted to the heroine's disastrous marriage.) But even though so few heroines are also wives, the novelists in their desire to point out faults in their world, go beyond the confines of the story to introduce extraneous social criticism, a habit which accounts for a large number of the digressions for which eighteenth- century novels are infamous. Many a novelist paused in his story to allow his hero or heroine to listen to some parent, friend, or relative tell the story of her unhappy marriage; the story told by Sophia Western's cousin. 9 Mrs. Fitzpatrick, is perhaps the best known example of such a digression. The wife’s position, as the novelists recognized, was often analogous to that of a household servant. Squire Western’s wife, for instance, “had been a faithful upper- servant all the time of their marriage” (I, 3^5)» a*id. in Sarah Fielding’s David Simple. Cynthia, one of the two heroines, is proposed to by a country squire, who is evidently undecided whether he is offering marriage or hiring a housemaid. "I shall expect nothing from you,” he tells her, "but that you will retire to the Country with me, and take care of my Family. I must inform you, I shall desire to have everything in Order; for I love good Eating and Drinking, and have been used to have my 5k own Humour from my Youth . . . .” Cynthia, with the author’s obvious approval, considers this as being an "upper Servant" and remarks that it is nothing short of prostitution for a woman of sense and education to marry a clown and a fool. Among the major novelists of the period, Richardson is the leading critic of his society’s attitude toward wives. Clarissa, his longest and his best novel, is almost entirely a dialogue on the rights of women, in­ cluding those of wives. The two extreme attitudes toward women sire taken by Miss Howe, the archetypal feminist, and Lovelace, the archetypal anti-feminist. Anna accuses Clarissa of thinking "more highly of a Husband * s preroga- 5o tive, than most people do of the Royal one. "These notions, . . she continues, "from a person of your sense and judg­ ment, are no-way advantageous to us; inasmuch as they justify that assuming Sex in their Insolence; when hardly one out of ten of them, their opportunities considered, deserves any prerogative at all. Look thro1 all the families we know; and we shall not find one-third of them have half the sense of their wives. And yet these are to "be vested with preroga­ tives! And a woman of twice their sense has nothing to do but hear, tremble, and obey— And for oonsclence-sake. too, I warrant!" (VII, 2k). Lovelace, speaking for the opposition, indignantly remarks on his uncle’s plan to settle £1,000 a year on Clarissa once she marries him. "But what a pretty fellow of an Uncle is this foolish Peer, to think of making a wife Independent of her Emperor, and a Rebel of course; yet smarted himself for an error of this kind" (IV, 2 6 3). Later he reminds Belford that "The gentle Waller says, Women are bora to be controul’d. Gentle as he was, he knew that. A tyrant-husband makes a dutiful wife" (IV* 2 6 5). In the same novel Richardson gives us a painful picture of Mrs. Harlowe, a woman so brow-beaten by her husband and her son James that she is forced to acquiesce in urging Clarissa’s marriage to Solmes. Clarissa points the moral to Anna: "Would any-body, my dear Miss Howe, wish to marry who sees a Wife of such a temper, and blessed with such an under­ standing as my Mother is noted for, not only deprived of all power; but obliged to be even active in bringing to 51 "bear points of high importance, which she thinks ought not to be insisted upon?" (I, 108). Pamela, too, has a few words to say on the subject of a husband’s power. After her marriage to Mr. B,, she dis­ covers to her amazement "that Husbands have a Dispensing Power over their Wives, which Kings are not allowed over the Laws .... Can you believe," she asks Polly Darnford, "that if a Wife thinks a Thing her Duty to do, and her Husband does not approve of her doing it, he can dispense with her performing it, and no Sin shall lie at her Door?" (Ill, 390). Taking a properly feminist stand, she insists upon the right to suffer for her own sins. The husband of Smollett’s Lady of Quality (in real life. Lady Prances Vane) exercises his prerogative every time she leaves him. He pursues her, takes possession of her house, turns her servants out, and makes himself master of all her possessions. She has no legal redress for such treatment, nor does Mrs. Modish in Edward Kimber’s Joe Thompson. When the latter*s despotic husband discovers that she is having an affair with Joe, he resorts to the effective expedient 55 of having her locked up in a madhouse. Mrs. Haywood’s Betsy Thoughtless is, however, the heroine who best illustrates an unfortunate wife's position. Betsy is good-hearted and kind, but vain and rather silly, and she believes that ten suitors in the bush are better than one in hand. She simply enjoys being the belle of the ball. As a result, she loses Trueworth, the one man she 52 really loves— though unbeknownst to herself. Trueworth, convinced by Betsy's flirtations that she does not care for him, marries another. The much chastened Betsy then yields to the advice of her friends and relatives and marries Mr. Munden, determined to be a good wife to him. Unfortu­ nately, Mr. Munden turns out to be avaricious; since his fortune is not large, he was "obliged to retrench somewhere; and, not being of a humour to deny himself any of those amusements he was accustomed to abroad, he became excessive- ly parsimonious at home." In order to make ends meet, Betsy dips into her own pin-money, the sum settled on her in the marriage contract. But even so, Mr. Munden is not satisfied. The pin money becomes a bone of contention between them. He maintains that "nothing, certainly is more idle; since, a woman ought to have nothing apart from her husband" (2*l4). He insists that Betsy pay from her own money for coffee, tea and chocolate for the household, and that she bear the expenses of a footman and maid. Betsy, bent upon atoning for her previous frivolity by making a success of her marriage, manages to keep house­ hold expenses within the family budget and even to save three guineas. When she proudly shows him the household bills and her little savings, her husband pockets the money and goes his way, ignoring her protests. During one argument over finances, he picks up Betsy's beloved pet squirrel, "and throwing it with his whole force against the carved work of the marble chimney, it's tender 53 frame was dashed to pieces." He remarks as he does so, "Here is one domestick, at least, that may be spared" (24-8). The painful picture that we are given of Betsy's married life certainly justifies her cry, "Is this to be a wife!— Is this the state of wedlock!— Call it rather an Egyptian bondage!— The cruel task-masters of the Israelites could exact no more" (244). An equally critical picture of abusive husbands is given in Charlotte Summers. Here the victim is the heroine's mother, married to the rakish younger son of an Irish peer. He deserts her and their child Charlotte, but she just barely manages, by pawning her clothes and painting fans for a few shillings a week, to keep them both fed and lodged. One day the wandering husband returns "followed by an ugly looking Fellow, and two Thief-like Porters" (I, 209). He proceeds to take advantage of the law which says that a wife's property is her husband's. "I will show you, Madam," he tells his wife, "I am your Husband, and that I will use what is here as mine" (I, 210). Then, recounts the wife's maid who is narrating the story, "the Captain was permitted to rifle us even of the Bed we lay on, and did not leave a Rag to my Mistress, but what was on her Back, all was carried off, and nothing left us but the bare walls" (I, 212). The traditional literary treatment of courtship helped to point up the grievances of wives. Traditionally, the lover is the lady's vassal and her slightest wish is law to him. But once the ceremony at the altar was over and the 5^ woman lost her legal rights, there occurred what Elizabeth Montagu called "a metamorphosis as is not to be equalled in all Ovid's collection.Women, especially, noticed the change and complained about it, as did Letitia Pilkington, the conduct of whose husband makes her a fruitful source for contemporary feminist statements. She is very much aware of the difference between the lover and the husband. "No sooner is the honeymoon expired," she remarks, "than the fawning servant turns to a haughty lord: instead of honour­ ing his wife, 'tls odds if he treats her with common civility."-^ Such husbandly treatment is the basis of Hester Chapone's quarrel with Richardson's claim that a woman need not love the man she marries since she can probably learn to do so afterwards. This the bluestocking finds most unlikely, when "from the humble, crawling slave, who dreaded her frown, the mean wretch begins to strut about, full of the sense of his new prerogatives, and puffed up almost to bursting, with the pride of having a creature every way his superior in his power. and bound to CO obey him.""^ The Female Spectator, too, always aware of the special problems of women, warns its readers not to be deceived by "this shew of obsequiousness in those who [will] afterward become their tyrants" (II, 9 6). The novelists were equally aware of the metamorphosis from lover to husband, and they use it to criticize the prevailing attitude toward wives. Fielding briefly notes that Captain Bllfil, who before marriage had "always given 55 up his opinion to that of the lady," became haughty and inso­ lent once matrimony removed all motives for condescending (I. 93). All three of Richardson’s heroines comment with bitterness on a similar change, Pamela, whose courtship was wildly unlike that of the average heroine in that she never had a chance to play the powerful lady, asks her friend Polly Darnford for the details of the letter’s courtship in order that she may know "how Gentlemen court their Equals in Degree." At the same time she reminds Miss Darnford of the depressing truth "that be the Language and Behaviour ever so obsequious, it is all designed to end alike— The English, the plain English, of the politest Address, is, ’I am now, dear Madam, your humble Servant: Pray be so good as to let me be your Master1" (III, l6o). Clarissa, after eloping with Lovelace, fears that although she is not even married to him, he is already assuming the airs of a husband, as he becomes "conscious of the power my indiscretion has given him over me." (Ill, 25). Her fears are obviously justified because a few pages later we find Lovelace, figuratively twirling his mustache and apostrophizing her in a letter to Belford to "Abate of thy haughty airs! . . . Art thou not in my Power?" (Ill, 33). And Harriet Byron, troubled by her obstreperous suitor Mr. Greville, perceives that if the average humble lover is likely to become an overbearing husband, the "threatening lover" must certainly become an outright tyrant (I, 12). After three months of wedlock Eliza Haywood’s Betsy Thoughtless wonders "what can make the 56 generality of women so fond of marrying . . . one, who, from a slave, "becomes a master” (238). In all of these comments by heroines, the operative words are tyrant/master and subject/ slave— words which sum up the husband/wife relationship in the eighteenth century, as both the novelists and the wives themselves clearly saw. In the novels, the usual remedy suggested to wives is the familiar ”follow Griselda.” Mrs. Haywood's Jenny Jessamy sees a friend mistreated by a tyrannical husband and puts the blame "on his own too great [[former]] obsequi­ ousness,” but her only cure for such mistreatment is for wives to try "by the most soft and obliging behaviour, to preserve and improve, if possible, the love of him whom it is no longer in our power to awe by a contrary way of act- ting."60 The Griselda solution was almost the only practicable one, given the near impossibility of obtaining a divorce in England at the time. As far as the Ecclesiastical Courts were concerned, a valid marriage could not be dissolved by divorce but only annulled, in which case the children were declared illegitimate, and, in effect, the marriage was assumed never to have existed. Before 1601 a civil divorce could be obtained by Act of Parliament, as Henry VIII had done. In that year, however, "the Star Chamber . . . by what appears to have been a doubtful exercise of jurisdiction, declared that marriage was by English law indissoluble." During the reign of Charles II, Parliamentary divorce was 57 re-introduced, but the process was too expensive for any but the very wealthiest and in practice was open only to the injured husband. The English divorce law was not liberalized until 1857, and prior to that time only four women had ever been granted divorces by Act of Parliament.^ A separation could be obtained in the Ecclesiastical Courts on grounds of adultery and cruelty, with adultery being far the easier to prove. Letltia Pilklngton put the case justly# if bluntly, when she said, "As they tell us 'tis not lawful to separate on any cause, save that of adultery, a woman of spirit who is married to a sordid disagreeable wretch, has nothing to do but to make him a cuckold; and then welcome thrice dear 62 liberty." Even a suit for separation was of so public a nature that most people would think long before entering into it. The privacy of those involved was absolutely de­ stroyed because judges could not accept their unsupported testimony, and thus, friends, neighbors, and relatives were called in to testify. The whole affair quickly became public property.^ Mrs. Haywood's about-to-be-married heroine, Jenny Jessamy, reflects that marriage is "a state from which there is no relief but the grave; or, what to a woman of any delicacy is yet worse, a divorcement" (1 0 ). Betsy Thoughtless' guardian Mr. Goodman is thrown into an apoplexy at the thought of divorcing his adulterous wife, "of appearing before the doctors of the civil law, to several of whom he was known, to prove his own dishonour— the talk of the town— the whispers— the grimaces— the ridicule, 58 which he was sensible this affair would occasion when exposed- the pity of some— and the contempt he must expect from others— " (1 ^5)» Mrs. Haywood recognizes the disagreeable nature of divorce proceedings, for both men and women, but she non- theless boldly advocates separation as a last resort. Her statement in the Female Spectator, speaking for the members of her mythical Spectator Club, is, for the 17^0's, positively revolutionary: When both parties are . . . equally determined to maintain their different opinions, tho' at the expence of all that love and tenderness each has a right to expect from the other, and instead of living together in any manner con­ formable to their vows before the altar, it is the judgment of every member of our club, that it is a less violation of the sacred ceremony which joined their hands, to separate intirely, than it is to continue in a state where, to persons mutually dissatisfied, the most trifling words or actions will by each be looked on as fresh matter of provocation (III, 226). Mrs. Haywood is the only novelist I have discovered who treats this problem with any degree of forthrightness; her heroine Betsy Thoughtless Munden separates "intirely" from Mr. Munden with the complete approval of her friends and relatives who had promoted the marriage in the first place. After patiently enduring Munden's avarice, his sullenness, his imperiousness, Betsy discovers that he is having an affair right in their own house with a Mile, de Roquelair. 59 "Neither divine nor human laws," said she, "nor any of those obligations by which I have hitherto looked upon myself as bound, can now compel me any longer to endure the cold neglects, the Insults, the tyranny, of this most ungrate­ ful, most perfidious man! I have discharged the duties of my station; I have fully proved I know how to be a good wife, if he had known how to be a tolerable husband: wherefore, then, should I hesitate to take the opportunity, which this last act of baseness gives me, of easing myself of that heavy yoke I have la­ boured under for so many cruel months"? (289). To have acted otherwise, says her friend Mrs, Loveit (a lady of scrupulous disposition) "would have been an Injustice not only to herself, but to all wives in general, by setting them an example of submitting to things required of them neither by law nor nature" (292). Betsy is lucky, however, because she has friends and relatives on whom she can depend for support. The law on this subject was summed up by the pious Judge Hide in Manby v. Scot (1663). "The Law does not allow a Wife to depart from her Husband in any Case, or for any Cause whatsoever, of her own head. . . . If a woman be of so haughty a stomach that she will chuse to starve, rather than submit and be reconciled to her Husband, she may make her own choice. . . . And if a married Woman who can have no goods of her own to Live on will depart from her Husband against his Will, and not submit herself unto him, let her live on Charity or Starve in the Name of God; . . . It is on the strict letter of the law that Mr. Munden takes his stand, reminding Betsy that "a wife who elopes from her husband, forfeits all claim to every thing that is his" (292). Betsy's lawyer sums up the situation: "Honour and gener­ 6o osity may, indeed, . , . oblige him to do that which, I am very apprehensive, the law will not enforce him to." But Betsy clearly sees that "if I can have no relief but from his honour and generosity, I must be miserable" (293)• Mrs. Haywood seems here to state the main problem of eighteenth-century law regarding wives: their dependence on their husbands* "honour and generosity." Many men, then as now, were both honorable and generous, but some were not, and against the abuse of power by these latter, their wives had no legal recourse except separation. And unfortunately, if a wife did leave her husband she was reduced to Judge Hide’s alternatives of living on charity or starving in the name of God. Even though most novelists’ main purpose may not be (as Mrs. Haywood's is) a criticism of the received notion of the "rights of wives," no reader could finish reading David Simple. Peregrine Pickle. Pamela. Clarissa, or Charlotte Summers without being painfully aware of the wife's problems. Economic Impotence also contributed to the unhappy wife's difficulties. Two women who were associated with the fiction of the period refused to submit to connubial tyranny; both lost their reputations, since neither was able to support herself by respectable means. Lady Frances Vane, better known as Smollett's Lady of Quality, spent years as the kept mistress of various affluent lovers rather than consent to live with her husband. On occasions when she was "out of keeping" she seems to have been 6i continually on the move; every time she settled down, her husband would arrive and impound her possessions or would try to carry her home by force. Lady Vane’s case, especial­ ly after the publication of Peregrine Pickle into which her Memoirs are interpolated, generated a great deal of comment among her contemporaries— both pro and con, but no one, so far as I can discover, suggested that "these things couldn’t happen in this day and age." Quite the contrary, according to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who found in Smollett’s account "more Truth and less Malice than any I ever read in my life." Letitia Pllkington and her husband Matthew were also at odds for most of their married life, and her memoirs read at times like a case study in mutual recriminations. It is difficult to sort out from her rather incoherent account just who left whom, but the indisputable fact is that Matthew and Letitia parted while they were both in London. She proceeded to earn a precarious living by writing and, at one time, by opening a small pamphlet shop which failed. Much of her income, however, seems to have consisted of charitable "donations" from male friends, the most faithful of whom was Colley Cibber. How many of these donations were the result of disinterested charity and how many were for services rendered is debatable. Her editor Iris Barry believes that charity accounted for some, but 66 by no means all of them. In any event, she seems never to have had more than enough to keep her barely alive. 62

Her ease and that of Lady Vane make only too clear how intoler­ able was the position of the eighteenth-century wife should she draw a loser in the matrimonial sweepstakes.

MARRIAGE AND FREEDOM OF CHOICE A wife's lack of legal rights and the near impossibility of divorce made it, therefore, a matter of considerable importance to a woman to find a compatible mate. Sophia Western's aunt, a lady who considers marriage "as a fund in which prudent women deposit their fortunes to the best advantage, in order to receive a larger interest for them than they could have elsewhere," asks her niece what possible objection she could have to Blifil as a husband. " «A very solid objection, in my opinion,' says Sophia— 'I hate him'" (I, 338-9). In this statement, Sophia sums up the right for which the eighteenth-century novelists propagandized most insistently— the right of a woman, not necessarily to marry whomsoever she chose, but, at least, to refuse any man she detested. A roster of the novels in which a woman must struggle against some form of parental tyranny in order to marry the man she loves (or to avoid marrying one she hates) would include most of those in this study. There was no law in eighteenth-century England which declared that a woman must marry the man her parents selected; technically, she was free to do exactly as she chose. In this case, then, the novelists were not objecting to a law, but to a social attitude. 63

The single woman of the 17*K)*s who wanted to choose her own husband was faced with the same problem as the wife who wanted to leave her husband— .economic Impotence. Marriages were usually arranged with an eye to improving the family's economic status, and the financial settlements were of the utmost importance. As Dr. Johnson remarked, when it comes to arranging marriages, in the estimation of many parents 6 7 "riches and happiness are equivalent terms." A parent could effectively scotch a daughter's love match simply by refusing any money for a marriage settlement. If the lover had means of his own, the problem was not acute; they could still marry. Many young men, however (especial­ ly among the heroes of novels), were also dependent on parental generosity, and a father could exert economic pressure on a son as well as on a daughter. In Thomas Mozeen's Young Soarron, for instance, the fathers of Valentine and Diana, the hero and heroine, have quarreled over politics and forbidden their children to see each other again. Valentine's father threatens to turn him out penniless if he attempts to see or write to Diana again. Naturally, he does try to see her and is turned out. Having no money of their own, Valentine and Diana are separated for almost the entire novel, and they are allowed to marry only when his father has a last-chapter 68 change of heart.

Besides debarring a woman from her own choice, 64 economic pressure by the parent could also force her into a marriage with a man she detested. When Squire Western tells Allworthy that unless Sophia marries Blifil, he will "turn her out o* doors; she shall beg, and starve, and rot in the streets" (I, 311), he utters a potent threat, as does Sir Thomas Grandison when he asserts that he will turn both his daughters out of doors, "if they presumed to encourage any address, but with his knowledge" (II, 6 3). Sophia, of course, has Lady Bellaston for refuge, but many women did not have even the doubtful charity of a Lady Bellaston on which to rely— certainly, many novel heroines did not, and these quite likely would starve if turned out penniless. As early as the reign of Queen Anne, Sir Richard Steele had criticized (at great length) the commercial aspects of marriage settlements. "I am the more serious, large and particular on this subject," he writes, "because my Lucubrations, designed for the encouragement of virtue cannot have the desired success as long as this incumbrance of settlements continues upon matrimony" (Tatler 199). At another time he calls such settlements "bargains to cohabit" (Tatler 149). By the time of George II, conditions had not improved, as is shown by the marriage announcements in the London and the Gentleman*s magazines, where the lady's fortune is given such prominence that the reader Is in danger of confusing these announcements with the stock market quotations (usually given on the following page in

the Gentleman1s). In January 1740, says the Gentleman* s laconically, "Mr. Johnson. Merchant of London.--to Miss

Warner of Eltham. 6000 1" (X, 3 6), or in June 17^8, "Crisp Crail of Berkshire, Esq;— to Miss Maria Perth of Kensington 15,000 1" (XVIII, 28^). The London records the marriage in April 17*l4 of "John Robinson Lytton of Hertfordshire. Esq; 6q to Miss Brereton, an heiress of 50,000 1 Fortune. 7 Any issue of either of these magazines yields similar announce­ ments. Henry Fielding became so irritated with this crass commercialism that in The True Patriot he begem making up his own announcements to satirize the London1s and the

Gentleman1s. His satire, however, is difficult to distinguish from the legitimate notices. I cannot see much difference between the London* s announcement of the marriage of Mr. Lytton to Miss Brereton and Fielding's of the marriage of "Mr. Christopher Puler, an eminent Merchant, to Miss Elizabeth Noyes, a Lady of Beauty and 70 Merit, and 6000 1. besides," except that Miss Brereton has more money. Others besides Fielding were critical of this commercialism. In the winter of 1752 there was evidently a rumor that the Duchess of Portland intended to force her daughter to marry a rich man whom she did not love. The Duchess asked Mrs. Delany to contradict the report because "she would rather marry her [daughter] to a virtuous man with a thousand pounds a year, than the greatest match in England without virtue." And Mrs. Delany reminds her sister Anne Dewes that she knows "the Duchess of Portland's heart 66 too well to believe that she can be so blinded by ambition as 71 to sacrifice a daughter's happiness." Samuel Johnson devotes Rambler No. 35 to this problem. It consists of a letter, supposedly from a wealthy young man who is seeking a wife among his county neighbors, which criticizes the indignity suffered by the marketable woman.

I saw, he says, not without indignation, the eagerness with which the daughters, wherever I came, were set out to show; nor could I consider them in a state much different from prostitution, when I found them ordered to play their airs before me, and to exhibit, by some seeming chance, specimens of their muslck, their work, or their housewifery. . . . As I knew these overtures not to proceed from any preference of me before another equally rich, I could not but look with pity on young persons condemned to be set to auction, and made cheap by injudicious commendations; . . ."^2 The most vehement and poignant criticism of the marriage market is Hester Chapone's reply to Richardson, who had rebuked her for claiming that parents were concerned too much with money and not enough with affection. The passage is a long one, but deserves, I think, to be quoted in full because it is the opinion of an intelligent and sensitive young woman in the year 1750, and hence, of one who is a representative of the group which was most concerned in this problem. You tell me, she protests to Richardson, that parents do not consider money unduly, I must therefore have dreamt that the prudent part of the world generallyconsider fortune 67 much more than anything else, In the matches they provide for their children, I must have dreamt, (for I did not Invent it) that those marriages which are made up by the parents are generally (amongst people of quality or great fortune,) mere Smithfield bargains, so much ready money for so much land, and my daughter flung into the bargain! I must have been asleep, which I fancied I heard experienced people talk of an honourable engagement with a person of small fortune, however worthy, however suitable by birth, merit and temper, as madness and folly: and those young women applauded as miracles of discretion and wisdom, who have sacrificed them­ selves to a fool or knave with a good estate, I took it into my head, I can't tell why, that fathers and mothers, now-a-days, frequently dressed out their daughters, and sent them into public places, with an appearance of five times the fortune they could give them, in hopes that they might catch— what?— Not a man of sense and worth, who should make them happier and better, but a fool, a rich fool; for their baits are calculated only for such gudgeons; no other can they hope to take. But you know infinitely more of the world than I, for little of this great world have I seen; and may be I was mistaken when I thought that parents in general (at least amongst the rich and great) consulted not their children's inclinations, or their real happiness in marriage, but sought to procure them the goods of fortune only. I thought this was the way of thinking of the generality of parents; and I thought it an absurd, a base and sordid way of thinking." This disparity between Richardson's opinion as expressed in his dispute with Miss Chapone and that expressed in his novels shows the way in which the novel by its very concreteness could become an instrument of social reform, perhaps against the author's will. I have no reason for doubting Richardson's absolute sincerity in this controversy; he says that in his opinion parents are not unduly swayed by economic motives, but the Harlowe familyfs conduct would

certainly seem to prove that they were. Even Clarissa*s mother, who is not actively evil, but merely so weak that she will submit to anything for a little peace and quiet, is entranced with the generous financial settlements Solmes offers. "But Ttfhat," she asks her daughter, "shall we do about the Terms Mr. Solmes offers? Those are the induce­ ments with everybody." By taking advantage of Solmes* offer, the family can increase its "interest in this County," and for this they are quite prepared to sacrifice Clarissa, completely disregarding the fact that she had "rather be buried alive . . . than have that man!" (I 127). The specific details of Clarissa’s situation, locked in her room, forbidden to communicate with friends or family, absolutely alone in her misery, are the most forceful condemnation of parental avarice that one can find in all of English literature. Whatever Richardson may have said to the ladies around the tea table at Northend on this subject, his novel must have convinced a large reading public that a parent's economic control could be the source of great unhappiness and injustice to a woman. In Richardson's Sir Charles Grandlson. we are given two views of parental authority, one bad, the other good. Emily Jervois, a young lady with a fortune of 50,000 pounds, has a problem different from that of the ordinary heroine. Being impressionable, easily led and under age, she is in danger of being married to the wrong man simply 69 because she has too much money and is thus a target of fortune hunters. Much of the novel is devoted to the attempts of Emily’s mother to gain control of her daughter in order to marry the girl to a man who is willing to make over to the mother half of Emily’s fortune. Sir Charles manages to thwart Mrs. Jervois* plans and declares that "Emily, if I can help it, shall not be the wife of any man’s convenience" (III, 302). Harriet Byron’s family, perhaps, best represent the author’s approved attitude toward marriage. Her grand­ mother and her aunt declare that "The approbation of their Harriet must first be gained, and then their consent is ready" (I, 7); her godfather replies to a suitor that "His daughter Harriet must choose for herself" (I, 7); her uncle Selby tells Harriet that "we have agreed long ago, not to prescribe to so discreet a girl . . . in the articles of Love and Marriage (I, 38); and, finally, her cousin Reeves declares that "It was a rule which all [her 3 relations had

set themselves, not to interfere with [her3 choice" (I, 8 8). In Pamela, too, Richardson criticizes marriage for money. The about-to-be-married heroine, apprehensive even though marrying a man she loves, wonders "what must be the Case of those poor Maidens who are forced, for sordid Views, by their tyrannical Parents or Guardians, to marry the Man they almost hate? . . . And what have not such cruel Parents to answer for? and what do not such poor innocent Victims sufferI" (II, 148). In Richardson’s novels, then, the good people 70 disapprove of marrying for material advantage, while the bad people, such as the Harlowes, Sir Thomas Grandison, and Mrs, Jervois are in favor of it. So also in Fielding*s work. In Tom Jones one can almost distinguish the good from the bad characters by their attitude toward this problem. Squire Western is attracted to Blifil as a husband for Sophia partly because the match will unite his own and Allworthy's lands, and his sister Mrs. Western, says Fielding, tries to persuade Sophia near the end of the novel to marry Lord Fellamar "by some prefatory dis­ course on the folly of love, and on the wisdom of legal prostitution for hire" (III, 237). Similarly, the two Blifils: Blifil, Sr., who in his opinion of the female sex "exceeded the moroseness of Aristotle himself," looks upon his marriage to Bridget as primarily an agreement contracted with Allworthy's "lands and tenements," and he is Indifferent whether he gets the squire's sister or his cat thrown in with them (I, 9*0. His son is completely unconcerned whether Sophia loves him, for "her fortune and her person were the sole objects of his wishes" (I, 298). Allworthy and Tom, the good people in the novel, both highly disapprove of marriage for money. The former considers it "a profanation to convert this most sacred institution into a wicked sacrifice to lust or avarice" and finds such a practice "scarce distinguishable from madness" (I, 56). The incident of Tom's meeting with the Quaker just after he has left home is inserted in the novel 71 only for the purpose of criticizing avaricious parents. The Quaker*s daughter has married against her father*s wishes the poor young man whom she loves, a man, says the Incensed father, "not worth a groat; and surely she cannot expect that I shall ever give her a shilling." He then opines that his daughter would be better off dead than living the life of a beggar. The outraged Tom calls him a madman, a fool, a villain— and refuses to sit longer "in such company" (II, 23-2*0. Lesser novelists are equally outspoken on this subject. The History of Honoria is a series of loosely connected stories of women whose parents have for various reasons (usually economic) forbidden them to marry the men of their choice and have shut them up in a French convent to enforce their decisions. The author*s stated purpose is "chiefly to set forth, and expose the barbarous and unnatural Ambition of Parents in sacrificing their own oL Offspring to vile Interest." 7< John Shebbeare*s The Marriage Act is also devoted almost entirely to parental tyranny (again, usually from economic motives). Before Lord Chancellor Hardwicke's

Marriage Act (26 George II. c.3 3) became law on March 26,

175*1' a marriage could be celebrated by a priest in orders at any time and place, without the consent of parents or guardians. Technically, a license was required, but if the couple failed to obtain one, the offense was treated

only as an attempt to defraud the revenue; the marriage 72 was still valid, even without a license. The lax laws gave rise to the notorious "Fleet parsons,*1 usually clergymen imprisoned for debt, who performed ceremonies in the neighbor­ hood of the Fleet prison. Instead of in heaven, marriages were made in taverns or brothels and with no questions asked— often not even the names of the bride and groom.' A common sign in the tavern and alehouse windows in the vicinity of the Fleet showed a male and a female hand with the subscription MARRIAGES PERFORMED WITHIN. 77 One Fleet parson was reputed to have married 40,000 couples in his

27-year career, and on the day before the passage of Hardwicke's Act, more than a thousand Fleet marriages were 78 performed. Among the pernicious effects of the pre-1754 marriage laws was the fact that they enabled a woman to avoid paying her Just debts. This was one case where her lack of legal rights actually worked to her advantage. If a woman owed money she could not pay, she could merely go to the Fleet, find a bachelor imprisoned for debt and pay him about three guineas to go through a marriage ceremony with her. She then went home and never saw her husband again. When the bailiff came, she produced her marriage certificate and thus became untouchable. As a married woman, she could not be arrested because her husband was responsible for her debts, and since he was already imprisoned for debt, her creditors could not touch him.7^ More harmful, however, were the forced marriages which Fleet parson could perform under these laws. If a man 73 could manage to kidnap an heiress (or any woman, for that matter, rich or poor) and hire a Fleet parson to perform the ceremony, he was from that moment her legal husband and the owner of her property, Richardson*s Harriet Byron and Eliza Haywood’s Betsy Thoughtless both, at one time in their careers, find themselves in just this situation. They manage to escape because they staunchly refuse to consent (Betsy clings to the bedpost and screams until help comes). Most women, however, faced with a choice between rape or death on the one hand and marriage on the other, would probably say ”1 do," And the general runof Fleet parsons, unsavory types at best and interested only in their fees, would have been unlikely to inquire into the degree of enthusiasm with which they uttered it. Harriet describes the parson whom Sir Hargarve Pollexfen produces to marry them as "a vast tall, big-boned, splay-footed man. A shabby gown; as shabby a wig; an huge red pimply face; and a nose that hid half of it, when he looked on one side, and he seldom looked fore-right when X saw him" (I, 233). He carries a dog-eared prayer book and appears to be drunk. Such Incidents are not simply the result of the novelists' over-active imaginations. In 17^5 Mrs. Delany writes to her sister about a Miss Macdermot, who was kidnapped by a cousin who tried to force her to marry him. Before she is rescued, safe and single, Miss Macdermot endures a number of crises, including defending her honor Ort with a sword and being buried up to the neck in a bog. 7b

The Marriage Act of 175^ brought about a much-needed reform. It required that a valid marriage in England (except for those of Quakers and Jews) be performed by a priest in orders, according to the rites of the Anglican

Church between the hours of 8 a.m. and noon in the presence of two witnesses, that the banns be published in the parish church for three successive Sundays before the ceremony, and that parental consent be provided for minors. Clergy­ men who performed marriages under any other circumstances 81 were subject to fourteen years transportation. The Act did not restrict women in their choice any more than before; it merely made runaway marriages a little harder (but there was still Gretna Green in Scotland), and it protected women like Miss Macdermot from kidnappings and Fleet parsons. Despite the Act's advantages, however, Shebbeare wrote his long two-volume novel. The Marriage Act, especially to criticize its effects. He perversely decided that the Act was Inimical to the liberty of free- born Englishwomen, and he praised the Duke of Bedford, who had opposed it in the House of Lords, calling him one "dear to every British Virgin, the generous Defender of their free Choice, the Protector of their Virtues, the Vindicator of their Rights" (II, 52). Most of the incidents (connected in the most tenuous manner possible to the main plot) concern the tyrannical parents of under-age sons or daughters whose refusal, almost always for economic reasons, to sanction their child's love match leads to suffering 75 and disaster. The main plot concerns an avaricious nouveau riche merchant James Barter with two daughters whom he wishes to marry into the upper classes, and the upper classes in this novel are rife with men willing to marry for money. The younger daughter, Eliza, resists and runs away from Sir Roger Rmable who is interested only in her fortune. Eliza is the heroine and her action is approved, but her elder sister, an extremely unsympathetic character with touches of Arabella Harlowe in her make-up, is delighted to marry Lord Sapplin, son of the nobleman Wormeaten. It is Wormeaten who expresses the attitude of the impoverished upper classes toward economically convenient marriages and Shebbeare's implicit criticism thereof. He says to his son, You know, my Lord, in what Light I look upon these Marriages, as a kind of taking Money with the Mortgage of a Wife to pay off a Mortgage on an Estate; and indeed the ______seems to have look’d upon it in the same Light, and contrived a Regulation of Matri­ mony for the Emolument of the Nobility, by this late which restrains the Sexes from Marriage till they are of Age; for, my Lord, these old Plebeian People, who are rich, will always be actuated by Ambition or Avarice, and generally marry their Daughters to Noblemen, tho* they lived wretched Lives; which very Girls, if this Act had not taken place, would have chosen Husbands for themselves amongst Men they liked, and been happy (I, 93). Many other novelists portray the distresses of young women who are in some way victims of economics— their parents either want them to marry money or apply economic pressure to force them to submit to their choice of a mate. Sophia Shakespear cannot marry her lover Cordello because her 82 mother controls her fortune. The father of George Edwards, in Sir John Hills' The Adventures of Mr. George Edwards, a Creole, forbids her son to marry his sweetheart Juliet Wentworth, daughter of a poor neighboring planter, sends him to England to prevent the match and is thus, indirectly, go the cause of most of the distresses which follow. Lady Gertrude, the teen-age sweetheart of the hero of John Cleland's Memoirs of a Coxcomb, is very nearly married to a widower "upwards of sixty" because her avaricious father is intent upon making her one of those "murderous sacrifices . . . to the spurious powers of Interest or Ambition," as Sir William indignantly describes commercial marriages. She escapes only through' the help of her mother who agrees with her daughter that "death [[would be] a gentle escape from the horrors of such a [marriage]." Angelica, the granddaughter of Lady Worthy, is spirited away by her mother to Portugal to prevent her marrying the poor Silvlus Greenland. When Silvius arrives in Lisbon, he hears that she is about to be married to one Sir Charles Morgan. As the affair is being discussed in an inn one night by the landlord and a guest, we sire given a notion of the pressure to which a woman is subjected in such a case and a clear indication of the author's criticism of such treatment. The landlord remarks that Angelica must be very miserable and weak to have consented to the match. "What, the Devil, would you have the Gorl [sic] do, answer'd the Merchant, 77 when she is teized and tormented by her own Mother; solicited and plagued by all her Acquaintance; frighten'd by being in a strange Country; deny'd a Passage out of it, and tempted to her Ruin by two thousand a Year Jointure?— 11®^ The hero of Edward Kimber's novel The Life and Adventures of Joe Thompson: a Narrative founded on Fact, though he is the son of a perfectly respectable clergyman, is only a linen- draper's apprentice, and hence is refused permission to marry Louisa, the daughter of Sir Walter Rich. But, in addition, Joe has an affair with a Mrs. Modish, who had been married against her will to a rich druggist of “unsociable, jealous, and suspicious temper." Mrs. Modish is used to point out a moral which the real life adventures of Letitia Pllkington and Lady Frances Vane, merely serve to verify— the unhappy wife may well become the adulterous wife. Mrs. Modish has been driven by her husband “to seek that happiness and felicity abroad [in Joe's arms], that she could not meet with at home," and this leads Joe to moralize upon how happily, how prudently she would have passed her days, had fortune bestowed upon her a husband of good sense and humanity that she could have an affection for, instead of a sour, morose, jealous wretch, who had not capacity enough to put any means in practice to engage her tender­ ness! Ye covetous, worldly-minded parents, how many unhappy creatures you have made!" (I, *K>). Kimber's sympathies in this case are with the lady, and as far as he is concerned she is completely justified in her actions by having been forced to marry for money someone 78 she didn’t love. Later in the novel, after her first husband has died, she remarries, this time for love, and makes a perfectly good, respectable wife, with no indication that her adultery has in any way damaged the goods. Mrs. Collyer's Felicia is prevented at first from 86 marrying her Lucius because he is poor, and both Patty Saunders and her father have the same problem. The father never does get to marry Patty’s mother, the woman he loved, and in his old age he reminisces about how much happier, if slightly less rich, he would have been had he defied his parents and married her anyway. (He would also have saved his daughter Patty from a number of hair-raising and wildly 8? Improbable adventures.) To list all of the women who are victimized by money- minded parents in the first generation of English novels would be a lengthy task. Let it suffice to say that a world where money and marriage did not stand in a cause- effect relationship would have seemed a Utopia to a middle- class woman of the 17^0*s, as the heroine of the History of Cornelia realizes while hiding in an isolated valley from a determined imitation of Richardson’s Squire B: It is to be observed, that as there was no inequality of fortunes, here marriages were made only through a natural liking: they had nothing to tempt one another to sell them­ selves for the gratification of their vanity; and as parents could not be biassed by covetous­ ness, where every one was equally poor, they never thwarted their children’s inclinations. They said that they could not expect them to perform the fatigues of a family with the 79

care and chearfulness they ought, unless love was their support under it; and therefore their children's tastes, and not theirs, were to he gratified. By these means, to behave well to their partner in wedlock, was so generally the inclination of most, and the interest of all, that an unhappy marriage was not to be found among them once in a OO century. 00 On that comparatively positive note, I would like to end this depressing discussion of avarice and move on to another equally depressing cause of parental tyranny— snobbery or Inequality of social status. As a bar to a happy marriage in the eighteenth- century novel, social status is a very poor second to economic equality, probably for the very good reason that by 174-0 the English had ceased to be rigidly observant of class distinctions in marriage. Lecky notes that inter­ marriage between the aristocracy and the middle class became more and more frequent after the Commonwealth, a development that he attributes in part to the increasing affluence of the industrial classes and the desire of the mortgage-prone nobility "to obtain large portions in marriage." Sir William Temple wrote in the late seventeenth century, "I think I remember within less than fifty years, the first noble families that married into the city for downright money, and thereby introduced by degrees the 89 necessity of giving good portions to daughters." Noble families not only married into the city, they occasionally descended even lower on the social soale.

According to the Earl of Egmont, writing in 174-5, Pamela's 8o was not an unusual oases This has "been a lucky season for low people*s marrying, for I am told that since the Duke of Shandois*s marriage with the inn-keeper’s maid near Slough, the Duke of Ancaster has married his kept mistress, and the Duke of Rutland will own his with his kept mistress, the Earl of Salisbury has married his steward*s niece— Miss Keate, daughter to a barber and shewer of tombs in Canterbury, and the Earl of Bristol his late wife’s maid. And the Duke of Bridg- 90 water his tutor’s niece."' Hence, there was little reason for the novelists to react critically to social snobbery, Richardson, Fielding and Eliza Haywood are the only ones who deal with snobbery in any detail. In Mrs. Haywood’s The Fortunate Foundlings. Louisa and her twin brother Horatio are left in a basket in the garden of Dorilaus, a wealthy young man just returned from the Grand Tour. Dorilaus, moved by their helplessness, adopts them, puts them out to nurse, later educates them (Horatio goes to Dr. Busby at Westminster and Louisa to a girl's school kept by a local gentlewoman) and when they are grown, finds a commission in the army for Horatio, who then proceeds to France with his regiment, leaving his sister at home with her guardian. Unfortunately for Louisa, Dorilaus falls in love with her. Since she feels an inexplicable dislike to marrying him (because, as it turns out later, he is her father), she has no alternative but to run away or be forced into a disagreeable marriage. She runs away and eventually finds employment as a paid companion to a gentlewoman named Melanthe. In Venice with her employer, Louisa Is courted by a M. de Plessis, wealthy in his own right and quite willing, as well as able, to dispense with fortune as a qualification for his bride. Louisa, however, is not willing to overlook her own low station. Would you, she asks de Plessis, "marry a foundling, a child of charity, one that has neither name nor friends, and who, in her best circum­ stances, is but a poor dependant, a servant in effect, tho' not in shew, and owes her very cloaths to the bounty of another?" (177). De Plessis1 reply, obviously approved by the author, is to ask her, "What has my love to do with fortune, or with family!" (189). Samuel Bichardson, displaying one of his more unattractive attitudes, was one who believed that family status had a great deal to,do with love, and Pamela is the unlikely vehicle for his expression of this opinion. Had Richardson closed his novel with the entry in Pamela’s diary for Thursday at "half an hour past eight o’clock" which gives us Squire B. about to lead his betrothed to the altar, Pamela would stand as a blazing assertion of social equality. At that Juncture, Mr. B., a member of the squirearchy and scion of a family whose heirs have not been known to "have disgraced themselves by unequal Matches" for several hundred years (II, 21), marries his mother’s wait­ ing maid and can consider himself lucky to get her. There can be no mistake about this point; the author makes very clear that Pamela's innate virtues fit her in every way for the station to which she is raised. When she tells 82

Parson Williams that "my Soul is of equal Importance with the Soul of a Princess, though my Quality is inferior to that of the meanest Slave" (I, 213). She anticipates Mary Wollstone- craft by some fifty-two years. Unfortunately, however, in an ill-advised moment, Richardson chose to extend Part I of the novel by one-third and to add all of Part II, equal in length to Part I. In these additions there is none of the melodramatic excitement of the earlier chapters of Part I; the characters merely moralize prosily for days on end, and among the subjects which they discuss is "degree," because Pamela's marriage has suddenly given it great topicality. What, asks the Squire's uncle, Sir Jacob Swynford, "will become of Degree or Distinction, if this Practice of Gentlemens marrying their Mothers Waiting-maids . . . should come into Vogue? . . . We have too many Instances of this." The Squire's aunt, Lady Davers, agrees, and despite her admiration for ner new niece, could almost wish "this Example had not been set by a Gentleman of such an ancient Family." Even the syco- phantish Pamela pipes up to assert her "absolute Opinion" that Degrees in general should be kept up," and sees her own case as "an happy Exception to the Rule" (III, 323-324). What emerges from this rather priggish discussion is that while we may all be equal in heaven, in this world gentility should strive to cleave to gentility, and that crossing class lines for a mate is excusable only when one finds a woman with— in Squire B's words— "an humble, teachable Mind, fine 83 natural Parts, a sprightly, yet inoffensive Wit [by this, he means that she shall not contradict her husband^], a Temper so excellent, and a Judgment so solid, as should promise , , . that she would become a higher Station and be respected in it" (III, 326). Since such a paragon is found only once in a generation, we can lay it down as a rule that degree should be observed. For those of us who think highly of the doctrine of the equality of man, this makes unpleasant reading, but for those who also cherish the equality of woman, there is still worse to come. While granting that a man is justified in stooping in the unlikely event that he finds another Pamela, Richardson refuses to concede even this right to women. A man, says Squire B. with no indication that the author does not thoroughly approve of his sentiments, "innobles the

Woman he takes, . . . But a woman, tho1 ever so nobly born, debases herself by a mean Marriage, and descends from her own Rank to his she stoops to" (II, 253). If Richardson ever read The Adventures of Captain Greenland, where the hero, Silvius, a simple farmer's son, marries the grand­ daughter of Lady Worthy, he must have felt anachronistically with Wilde's Lady Bracknell that such an act displayed a contempt for the ordinary decencies that reminded one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. A refreshing antidote to Richardsonian class conscious­ ness is provided by Amelia. I do not know whether Fielding intended this novel as an answer to Richardson's snobbery, 8if in the way that Joseph Andrews Is obviously intended as an answer to his Pharisaical sexual morality, but Fielding does oppose Richardson’s view of class distinctions in the person of Sgt. Joe Atkinson. Amelia, as a baby, was put to nurse with the sergeant's mother, and, therefore, she considers him as her "brother." In discussing the sergeant as a possible husband for a lady, Amelia exclaims to Mrs. Bennet, "How monstrous . . . is the opinion of those who consider our matching ourselves the least below us in degree as a kind of contamination] . . . I should not be ashamed of being the wife of an honest man in any station.--Not if I had been much higher than I was, should I have thought myself degraded by calling our honest sergeant my husband." Mrs. Bennet finds considerations of degree to be preposterous, "abhorrent from justice, from common sense, and from humanity" and furthermore "extremely incongruous with a religion which professes to know no difference of degree,

but ranks all mankind on the footing of brethren]" (I, 6l). When Mrs. Bennet, firmly ensconced in the middle-class as the daughter of one clergyman and the widow of another, marries Sgt. Atkinson, son of a hired wet nurse, her action is approved by Billy Booth, Amelia and Dr. Harrison, the spokesmen for goodness in the novel. Thus, Fielding agrees with Richardson that in the eyes of God, we are, indeed, all equal, but Fielding goes a step further in maintaining that even in this world we are so. Should a woman be able to overcome adverse economics 85 and social snobbery, a third barrier to choosing the man she loved for a mate was the prevalent insistence on "female decorum." Really "nice" girls in the eighteenth century were, evidently, not supposed to have enough sexual feeling to be able to fall in love before they were married. Modesty and innocence required that a woman merely choose one whom she thought she could learn to love afterwards. This, at least, was the opinion advanced by Mary Astell in her Serious Pro­ posal to the Ladles for the Advancement of Their True and Great Intirest. in other respects an extremely radical document for the year 169^. Nearly sixty years later Samuel Richardson in Rambler 97 was still clinging to this same opinion. "That a young lady should be in love," he says, "and the love of the young gentleman undeclared, is an heterodoxy which prudence, and even policy, must not allow. But by the time Richardson wrote, this opinion was considered too conservative— -at least by one lady. His friend the bluestocking Elizabeth Carter wrote irritably to Catherine Talbot regarding Rambler 97, "I cannot see how some of his doctrines can be founded on any other supposition than that Providence designed one half of the human species for idiots and slaves. One would think the man was in this respect a Mahometan."^3 The novelists often agreed with Miss Carter, and asserted a woman's right to admit natural, honest sexual feelings. Patty Saunders* daughter Charly, asked to decide whether she loves Lord D— -r, who has proposed marriage, answers, 86

"Sir, a true Answer to the Question you are pleased to put to me, had been the last Thing Modesty would have permitted me to reveal," but perceiving that "Bashfulness would not gain her the man she loved," Charly decides that modesty is a poor substitute for a good husband and admits that "the Heighth of [her] Ambition is to render his Lordship all possible Happiness" (2 6 3). Mary Collyer’s Felicia goes even further and admits to herself and her friend Charlotte that she loves Lucius even before he has declared his love for her; she is also extremely critical of custom in this respect. Trying to confess to her aunt that she loves Lucius, Felicia finds to her dismay that she blushes, feels a sense of shame, completely loses her confidence and is unable to say the words "I love." How hard it is, she reflects indignantly, "for a virtuous mind to prevent that shame which ought only to accompany vice, from attending the most laudable passionsJ The mind, enfeebled by custom, is taught to regard that as a weakness which is its highest perfection; nor is it strange that the most honourable and decent love should be accompanied with a modest reluctant shame, since we are taught to blush at being discovered in the practice of the noblest and most sublime virtues" (I,

I89-9 0). Equally outspoken is Betsy Thoughtless Munden who, rather than playing the modest retiring maiden calmly writes a letter accepting a proposal from Charles Trueworth, Esq., whom she admits she loves. In so doing, says the author, she doubtless incurs the condemnation of "the prudish part 87 of the sex," though “those of a more reasonable way of thinking, will be far from pronouncing sentence against her . . . [slnce^ it would have been only a piece of idle affecta­ tion In her to have gone about to have concealed her regard for a person whom so many reasons induced her to marry" (308), Boldest of all, however, is Mrs. Gold, who proposes to and is accepted by William Chalgneau's Jack Connor, remarking at the time that she has acted like a woman of courage if not of prudence Given this attitude, then it is not surprising that (as Henry Fielding points out) women are liars, especially about affairs of the heart. Of course, they lie, he remarks, when "they may plead precept, education, and above all, the sanction, nay, I may say the necessity of custom, by which they are restrained, not from submitting to the honest impulses of nature (for that would be a foolish prohibition),

but from owning them" (Tom Jones, III, 8 9). One way to assure a girl*s modesty was to keep her from ever knowing— or wanting to know— any men, and to seclude her as much as possible from their conversation and their company. Dr. Johnson in Rambler No. 191 railed against the practice of frightening young girls into virtue with stories of male perfidy— much as some parents still frighten young children with stories of the bogey-man— and the Gentleman1s Magazine found the topic of enough interest to reprint his article in January 1752 (XXII, 21). Rambler, No. 191 Is a letter from Bellarla, a young lady whose mother and two 88 aunts have taught her all her life "that no man ever spoke but to deceive, or looked but to allure* that the girl who suffered him who had once squeezed her hand, to approach her a second time, was on the brink of ruin; and that she who answered a billet, without consulting her relations . . . would certainly become either poor or infamous," Launched into society at the age of fifteen and a half, Bellaria discovers to her amaze­ ment that men, "if they ever were so malicious and destruc­ tive, have certainly reformed their manners" because far from intending her any harm, "their only contention is, who shall be allowed most closely to attend, and most frequently to treat [her^."-^ Mrs. Haywood finds the practice of purdah to be down­ right dangerous, and maintains that instead of protecting a woman’s innocence, it was more likely to expose her to temptations with which she was unable to cope. Virtue's best defense, she maintains, is a little knowledge of men and the ways of the world: . . . I say a woman is in far less danger of losing her heart, when every day surrounded with a variety of gay objects, than when by some accident she falls into the conversation of a single one. A girl, who is continually hear­ ing fine things said to her, regards them but as words of course; they may be flattering to her vanity for the present, but will leave no impression behind them on her mind: but she, who is a stranger to the gallant manner with which polite persons treat our sex, greedily swallows the first civil thing said to her, takes what perhaps is meant as a mere compli­ ment, for a declaration of love, and replies to it in terms which either expose her to the designs of him who speaks, if he happens to have any in reality, or if he has not, to his ridicule in all company where he comes into.9° As an illustration of her point, she relates two stories of ladies who were overprotected. One, Martesia, having no experience of men, marries the first one that offers, later meets a man she really loves, has an affair with him and is ruined. Seomanthe, the other, is kept locked up by a prudish aunt and, consequently, elopes with the first man she meets. He turns out to be a scoundrel who absconds with her fortune and leaves her penniless. The moral is that a woman who had known a few men would never have made these mistakes. Given a reasonable opportunity to converse with the other sex, Martesia would not have married a man she didn’t love because she would have had some inkling of what love was, and Seomanthe would have been able to recognize a fortune hunter when she saw one. One of the charms of Smollett’s Emilia Gauntlet is her ability to handle men— particularly Peregrine Pickle. The second time Peregrine meets her, he is so smitten that he snatches Emilia in his arms; instead of retiring to nurse her wounded modesty, she teases him about his self- assurance and leads him in to meet her mother. Smollett explicitly attributes this sophistication and good sense to the fact that ’’her natural frankness had been encouraged and improved by the easy and familiar intercourse in which she had been bred” (98). Emilia’s knowledge that men are humans just as women are— and not some dreaded sub- or super-human species— stands her in good stead on another occasion. She and 90

Peregrine attend a masquerade (dressed as Pantaloon and Columbine), after which the yet unregenerate Peregrine takes her to his apartment on the pretence that it is too late to be abroad because of robbers, Emilia, says Smollett, "had too much penetration to be imposed upon by this plausible pretext" and "she comprehended his whole plan in a twinkling," Instead of fainting, she tells Peregrine, "I confide too much in my own innocence, and the authority of the law, to admit one thought of fear, much less to sink under the horror of this shocking situation, into which I have been seduced." She then marches down the stairs "with surprising resolution," has the watchman call a coach and goes home (4-06-8). The abashed Peregrine is left to the mournful contemplation of his own deficiencies. Just as resourceful as Emilia is Sarah Fielding1s Cynthia in David Simple; her knowledge of the ways of man saves her from many an embarrassing situation. On the occasion of a two-day coach journey from the country to London, one of Cynthia's three male traveling companions (all total strangers to her) tries to hold her hand, but, says Miss Fielding, "she knew enough of the world to repulse such Impertinence, without any great difficulty; and by her Behaviour, made that Spark very civil to her, the remainder of the Time she was obliged to be with him" (II, 58). Later on, when accosted in a dark garden by a drunk, the capable lady "thought it wisest to be civil to him; for altho* she was not far from the House, yet nothing could 91 have shocked, her more, than to have been obliged to make a noise" (II, 6 9). She knows enough to realize that most drunks are relatively harmless, and her main concern is not to wake everybody in the inn. Like Emilia's, her chief charm is this ability to take care of herself around men, and both heroines acquired this ability by being allowed to associate and converse freely with them. This very real necessity to know something about a man before becoming his subject is perhaps best summed up by Camilla in Miss Fielding's sequel to David Simple, entitled Familiar Letters between the Principal Characters in David

Simple. I Have often wished, [^writes Camilla^] there were some bounds set to what Men call Encouragement, that it might not be thought a Crime in us to desire some little time for Consideration, be­ fore we put ourselves entirely in a Man's power; and that the Gentlemen would be so indulgent, as to allow us the Liberty to make a difference between drinking Tea, or sitting in company every now and then an hour with a Man, and be­ ing married to him. If this is too much Indulgence to be granted us, they must proceed in calling every Woman, who is not stupid, a Coquette, and we must bear the Reproach as patiently as we can (I, 128).

ECONOMICS AND EMPLOYMENT Single women or widows were slightly better off than were wives as regards the law in eighteenth-century England. They could own property (as Sir Charles Grandison's two sisters do), their income, if any, was their own and they retained their existence as legal entities— they went to jail for their own debts, for Instance, and no one's permis- 92 sion was necessary before they could be admitted for bail. Economically, however, there were no particular advantages to the single state; the methods by which any woman, married or single, could support herself were few. The word "spinster” acquired its uncomplimentary connotations in the eighteenth century, when "unmarried women were no longer positive economic assets to the household because there was less need for their labour 97 in spinning, weaving and other economic tasks."" The maiden aunt or sister whose work had formerly contributed to the domestic economy of the household and who had, in a sense, been able to consider herself useful, if not technically self-supporting, now found herself superfluous— an object of charity to be patronized rather than a fellow worker to be depended on. As such she came to be resented by those who had to pay the bills, and her position must often have been an uncomfortable and an undignified one. While most relatives might resent her as a drain on the family income, common humanity would restrain them from turning her out into the streets to starve. They would probably find other ways, however, of expressing their resentment. And what man resents he often makes the butt of his wit. This, of course, is what happened to the "old maid" in the eighteenth century. The contemptuous attitude followed her even to the grave: Here lyeth the body of Martha Dias, Always noisy and not very pious; Who liv’d to the age of three score and ten, 93 And gave to Worms what she refus'd to men.

or Here lies a certaine Elizabeth Mann, _ Who liv'd an old Maid and died an old Mann.9° The novelists, as reflectors of their society, often express this contempt, too. Everyone is familiar with Fielding's Mrs. Western, Smollett's Tabitha Bramble and the learned maiden aunt of Roderick Random's Narcissa, all old maids and all figures of fun. But these women are not ridiculed primarily because they are spinsters, but rather because of other characteristics which make them laughable. Narcissa's aunt and Mrs. Western have unjustifiable pretensions to learning; Tabitha is penurious and a superannuated flirt— -and as such they are rightly shown to be ridiculous. Richardson's Harriet Byron makes this distinction when she defends the single woman. An Old Maid £she says'] may be an odious charac­ ter, if they will tell us that the bad quali­ ties of the persons, not the maiden State, are what they mean to expose: But then they must allow, that there are Old Maids of Twenty; and even that there are Widows and Wives of all Ages and complexions, who, in the abusive sense of the words, are as much Old Maids, as the most particular of that class of females (I, 355). Though Henry Fielding did not often agree with Richardson, he would probably have admitted the Justice of Harriet's statement that the term "old maid" could Just as easily refer to wives and widows as to unmarried ladies, since it referred to certain qualities a lady possessed, 9^ irrespective of her marital state. At least, his Mrs. Bennett in Amelia (who had two husbands) is just as disagreeable and ridiculous in her intellectual pretentiousness as is the celibate Mrs. Western in Tom Jones. The cause of the spinster’s problem is stated by- Harriet’s cousin, Mrs. Reeves. Single women, she says, are ”peculiarly unprovided and helpless: . . . how can they, when family-connexions are dissolved, support themselves? . . . a woman is looked upon as demeaning herself if she gains a maintenance by her needle, or by domestic attendance on a superior; and without them where has she a retreat?" (Ill, 382). Sir Charles' solution is the establishment of Protestant nunneries where "single women of small or no fortunes," widows, or wives of absent husbands could live "genteelly," doing such work as they were qualified for to contribute to their own support and that of the community. (Ill, 383-^). The spinster, as Sir Charles recognized, was only one part of a larger group of lone women whose inability to earn a living made their positions very nearly intolerable— a group which also included widows and wives who had left (or been left by) their husbands. Smollett, too, demands his readers’ sympathy for these three classes of lone women. Monimia de Zelos, his Spanish heroine, finds herself alone in London and in the clutches of the infamous Ferdinand Count Fathom, a man of "most savage and impious intentions." "Common affliction was an agree­ able reverie to what she suffered," says Smollett, "deprived 95 of her parents, exiled from her friends and country, reduced to the brink of wanting the most indispensable necessaries of life, in a foreign land, where she knew not one person to whose protection she could have recourse, from the inexpressi- ble woes that environed her.” 99 Obviously, Monimia has many troubles— -to lack parents, friends or country cannot in any circumstances be a very pleasant situation in which to find oneself. But her real problem is "wanting the indispensable necessaries of life." The loss of parents and country can somehow be borne, and new friends can be made, but to put it bluntly, one must eat. And this is what gives Fathom his power over her, the simple fact that she will starve to death without his aid. Speaking for the wives, the Lady of Quality justifies her notorious amours on the grounds of economic necessity. Of her husband she says, "If he had not reduced me to the necessity of putting myself under the protection of some person or other, by depriving me of any other means of subsistence, I should never have given the world the least cause to scandalize my reputation" (^86). Smollett intends that we should sympathize with the Lady of Quality, not condemn her, because he deliberately introduces the widow, the third class of lone woman, in order to show her kindness in contrast to the world's callousness. Peregrine Pickle one day hears the story of "a poor gentlewoman, who was reduced to the most abject misery" by the suicide of her husband, "leaving his wife then big with child, to all the horrors of indigence and grief" (^2 9). The ensuing discussion of her case by the assembled company clearly shows the reader Smollett's indignation at the kind of treatment this helpless woman can expect from the world. One woman concludes that the widow "must be a creature void of all feeling and reflection, who could survive such aggravated misery; therefore, did not deserve to be relieved, except in the character of a common beggar." Another is convinced that she will have to become a prostitute, since this is the only way she can earn a living, and, therefore, "compassion would be most effectually shewn, in leaving her to perish in her present necessity." A third offers to employ her "in quality of an upper-servant," provided her children are sent to the Foundling Hospital (^29-30). The outraged Peregrine, who "had a tear for pity, and an hand open as day, for melting charity," goes immediately to visit the widow, and finds sitting beside her the Lady of Quality, the only other person in the world willing to help her. These women certainly needed all the sympathy the novelists could give them. They were poor, they had no one to whom they could turn, and they had almost no way to support themselves. Dr. Johnson noted that women are usually much more careful about money than are men because "the opportunities in general that they possess of improv­ ing their condition are much fewer than men have,"'*'00 and Horace Walpole remarked to Mary Berry that women have 97 "neither profession nor politics nor ways of getting money like men."101 Both refer to the "genteel" middle-class woman here, not to a member of the lower classes who could hawk oysters through the streets or deal from door to door in used clothing without losing status— since she had none to lose. Cynthia and Camilla, the two heroines of Sarah Fielding's David Simple, perhaps best illustrate the problem of the impoverished gentlewoman. Both are turned out of their respective homes and forced to fend for themselves. When Camilla's brother Valentine becomes ill, it falls to her to support them both. "Alas, Sir," she tells David, "there is no Situation so deplorable, no Condition so much to be pitied, as that of a Gentlewoman in real Poverty. . . . Birth, Family, and Education, become Misfortunes, when we cannot attain some Means of supporting ourselves in the Station they throw us into." Former friends in their own station disown them; tradesmen are jealous of the competition and combine to force them out of business; and even "the lower sort of people" resent "a Person who was born in a higher station." The lower classes, she says, will not "suffer us to be equal with them, and get our Bread as they do; if we cannot be above them, they will have the pleasure of casting us down infinitely below them" (II, ^6- W. Even if a woman had the strength of character to brave public opinion and the loss of status, the laws of settle- 98 ment in the eighteenth century limited her mobility to such an extent that it was almost impossible for her to move from parish to parish in search of employment. Each parish was responsible for the relief of its own poor and property owners were taxed to provide for them. Not unnaturally, local officials were liable to be extremely ungracious in welcoming anyone who looked to be a possible charge on the parish; they assiduously searched out and sent back to their home parishes any prospective pauper before he could remain long enough to establish a residence. When their landlady discovers that Miss Fielding*s Camilla and Valentine are destitute, she tells them that 11 she must send for the proper Officers of the Parish to which we belonged, and charge them with us, for she could not venture to bring any Expence on herself" (II, A9). The most suspicious characters in the eyes of a beadle were women and children, because they were least able to support themselves. Statistics of the Cambridgeshire Quarter

Sessions for the years 1736-17^9» showing those sent back to 102 their places of settlement, clearly reflect this attitude:

married couples 80 women 31 widows (usually w/children) 21 children 13 single men 16 Total l6l A. woman with dependent children was almost sure of being moved, and the bastardy laws were such that any single woman was unwelcome. Because illegitimate children took their place of settlement from the parish where they were born rather 99 than from that of their mother or father, all unmarried women were a potential source of little charges on the parish, 11 In the execution of the "bastardy laws parochial officers appear to have "been bereft of both humanity and decency,'1 remarks Dorothy Marshall in her study of The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century, and she quotes from parish records to prove her point: 1723 for removing of foure bige bellyd woemoen out of ye parish when like to bee charge­ able . . lo-OO 1724- Gave hir to go off with hlr Great Beley . . 16-00 1722 To a big bellyd woman several days and nights at nursing at Robinsons, & con­ veying her to Chigivell after she had gathered strength to prevent her lying in here, she fell to pieces in 2 or 3 days there . , 17-710^ There were almost no lengths to which some officers would not go to prevent the birth of an illegitimate child within the parish limits. Women so ill they could not stand or those actually in labor would be driven to the next parish and dumped unceremoniously by the roadside to shift for themselves. One of the most touching stories in Eliza Haywood's Female Spectator shows the operation of the poor laws with respect to women. The story concerns Jemima, a young girl tricked into a false marriage by the rakish Lothario. Abandoned in London, Jemima finds herself pregnant, and is told by her landlady "that she must not expect to lie in at their house . . . and that if she did not speedily remove, 100 they should be obliged to send to the officers of the parish" (IV, 186). She then gets lodging with a midwife who, after the birth of her twins, "compell'd her to sell her cloaths, in order for the payment of her money, then turn'd her out of doors with both her children, for nobody would take the charge of them, without security that they should not become burthensome to the parish" (IV, 189). Forced to change lodging again, Jemima goes to several houses which advertise rooms for rent, but the little infants she had in her arms prevented every one from taking her in, and it growing towards dark, she was obliged to go to an inn, where even there she could not be admitted, till she had consented to be lock'd all night into her chamber; so fearful were they of her going away before they were stirring, and leaving the children on their hands (IV, 191). She then sets out to beg her way across country to Lothario's house; and even when she offers to pay for her lodging in advance,"the wretches scrupled to give her shelter because she had not a pass, and some were cruel enough to tell her, they were sure she had been whipped out of London; for were she an honest woman, the magistrates would not have refused to give her that testimony of her good behaviour" (IV, 201). Bleak as Is Jemima's story, it does not exaggerate the plight of the woman with dependent children; that of any woman who was merely trying to earn the barest necessities of life was not much better. The woman's economic position was not absolutely hopeless, though most of the trades open to her were menial, illegal or immoral. The novelists are willing to depict a straitened heroine performing menial tasks and to demand sympathy for her, but none of them goes so far as to show her performing illegal or immoral acts; they do, however, allow many minor female characters to take to crime or prostitution— or both— and they condemn such acts much less than one would expect from the contemporaries of Samuel Richardson. The least degrading occupation for the lone woman was in "trade" of one sort or another. The bankruptcy lists in the Gentleman's Magazine show that the most popular businesses or, at least, the ones in which women most frequently failed were those of the draper, the grocer and the milliner. And infrequently, one can find mention of a female mercer, a hop-merchant, a clothier, an apothecary or a hosier. The most unlikely tradeswoman listed for the years 17^0-175^ is Anne Fowke, engine-maker, who took bankruptcy in May 17^9 (XIX, 237). Plomer lists fifty-two women who made their living as printers and booksellers in England between 1726 and 1775.

As early as 1 6 9 6, one anonymous lady had criticized Englishmen "that they breed our Women so ignorant of Business. Were women taught bookkeeping, for instance, they could perform many tasks in the mercantile world and release an "abundance of lusty Men" for work "where hands and Strength are more requir'd." Besides, teaching women to run a business

might prevent the ruine of many Families, which is often occasion'd by the Death of 102

Merchants in full Business, and leaving their Accounts perplex'd and embroil'd to a Widdow and Orphans, who understanding nothing of the Husband or Father's Business occasions the Rending, and oftentimes the utter Confounding a fair Estate; which might be prevented, did the Wife but understand Merchants Accounts, and were made acquainted with the Books. And this is exactly what happens in The History of Cornelia. The heroine lodges with a widowed Mme. de Miteau, who keeps a small shop. One day she finds her landlady in tears because she is about to be taken up for a debt of forty pounds, convinced that "she had no prospect but a prison for herself and [that her children"] had no chance of having either a subsistence, a nurse or conductor" (^7). The author then proceeds graphically to illustrate Mary Astell's point that women are perfectly able to manage a business. Cornelia takes over from the distraught Mme. de Miteau, balances her books, pays her debts and reorganizes the business. By the regularity Cornelia introduced into the whole, the new branches with which her ingenuity enabled her to extend their trade; and the industry, of which she set an example to all that were concerned in the shop, and took care to have followed by them, soon brought more business to it than ever. Cornelia's spectacular business abilities so impress the wealthy Mme. Du Maine that she offers her a Job managing her large estate in the country.10^ Unfortunately, to set up in business for oneself required capital, which most distressed heroines did not have. Lucy Wellers, left a small sum by her father, wishes 103 to be bound apprentice to a milliner and eventually to go into business for herself. But her guardian’s wife, Mrs. Searls, remarks of this proposal, "Now that, you know, would not suit her poverty; for my own milliner, I have heard, had several hundred pounds to set up with, which this poor girl never can have" (I, 16). Mrs. Searls* alternative is that Lucy go into service with a brazier's lady "who wanted a young lady, to sit in her nursery, and wait upon her children" (I, 15). Similarly with Mrs. Bennet in Fielding’s Amelia. She wishes to set up in some business with the £100 left to her by her father, but her aunt points out that "the sum was too trifling" and suggests that her niece "think of immediately going into service" (II, 25). Lucy Wellers and Mrs. Bennet both have the same alterna­ tives, setting up in business for themselves (or accepting employment in an already established firm) and going into domestic service. For the woman with children to support, of course, there was no alternative. Children of domestic servants have never been welcome in an employer's house­ hold— and they were probably just as unwelcome in the 17*K)'s as they were 150 years later when George Moore wrote Esther Waters. Charlotte Summers' mother supports herself and her child by painting fans, and the destitute widow in

Peregrine Pickle is offered a job as "an upper-servant" if she is willing to send her twins to the Foundling Hospital. The women who went into trade rather than domestic 10^ service nearly always chose either dressmaking or millinery— two trades that have almost always been carried on primarily by women.One reason for the popularity of these trades with the distressed gentlewoman is that she had some training in them. Every young girl was (and many even today are) taught to sew, knit or embroider because it gave her some­ thing to do in the long days that had to be passed now that economic specialization had deprived her of many of her daily tasks. Even the woman who spent her mornings at her toilette, and her afternoons and evenings at cards, tea and scandal— as according to some captious critics most of them did— found a few hours of the day when time hung heavily on her hands. As Dr. John Gregory (who shared honors with Rousseau in being an especial target of Mary Wollstonecraft) told his daughters, "The intention of your being taught needlework, knitting and such like, is not on account of the intrinsic value of all you can do with your hands, which is trifling, but . . . to enable you to fill up, in a tolerably agreeable way, some of the many

“I a Q solitary hours you must necessarily pass at home." Unfortunately, the very ubiquitousness of this skill among women militated against the poor gentlewoman trying to earn her living by her needle. If so many women could be their own milliners and dressmakers, this obviously cut down on the number of potential customers for her wares. Eliza Haywood was very aware of this problem when she disapproved in the Female Spectator "of compelling young 105 ladies of fortune to make so much use of the needle, . . . there are enough whose necessities oblige them to live wholly by it; and it is a kind of robbery to those unhappy persons to do that ourselves which is their whole support"

(III, 157-8). The demand for needle work, then, was small; the supply, on the other hand, was large. Even philanthropic projects which attempted to help women to economic inde­ pendence tended to increase the number of those employed in the clothing trade and, hence, to oversupply the al­ ready limited market and lower prices. When the Magdalen Hospital for penitent prostitutes was established in 1758, the founders, with the laudable intention of helping these women become self-supporting and respectable members of society, taught them to make clothes, lace, artificial flowers, hats, mantuas, gloves and garters. Since the prostitutes in the Hospital were assured of food, clothing, and a place to sleep, their work could be sold at a lower price, thus adding to the distress of the independent but impecunious gentlewoman.10^ The working women were further handicapped by the male tendency to treat them "as if they stood there to sell their Persons to Prostitution," according to Steele. No young fop, he says, can buy even a pair of gloves "but he is at the same Time straining for some Ingenious Ribaldry to say to the young Woman who helps them on," and he prints a letter from a young lady who keeps a coffee house, com­ 106 plaining that the male customers "loll at the Bar, staring just in my Face, ready to interpret my Looks and Gestures according to their own imaginations" (Spectator, 155). few women were active in any public way of life that those who were must have seemed quite "fast," Female decorum, with little regard for economic realities, demanded that women be shy and retiring and not flaunt themselves in public. Dr. Johnson considered even portrait painting an improper employment for women. "Publick practice of any art," he told Boswell, "and staring in men's faces, is very indelicate in a female."^'1’0 The woman who appeared behind the counter of a haberdasher's or a coffee-house must have impressed the eighteenth-century male very much as the one who appears on Playboy1s double page spread impresses his twentieth-century descendant— he probably thought that, she was no better than she should be and fair game for anyone. Mrs. Haywood's "fortunate foundling" Louisa finds just this problem when she accepts employment with a milliner after running away from her guardian Dorilaus. If we can trust the novelists of the time, dressmakers', mantua- makers' and milliners' establishments were in the eight­ eenth century social gathering places for both men and women. When a girl wanted to meet a young man of whom her parents disapproved, she made an assignation with him at her dressmaker's, as did a wife who wished to meet her lover. Rooms were provided upstairs for those who met for reasons other than a cup of chocolate and a brief conversa- 111 tion. While employed at the milliner's, Louisa attracts 107 the notice of a wealthy Mr. B n who frequents the establish­ ment. One day, he runs into the room where she is working, "and after some little discourse, which he thought was becom­ ing enough from a person of his condition to one of her's, began to treat her with freedoms which she could not help resisting with more fierceness than he had been accustomed to from women of a much higher rank.11 Louisa repulses him, and thinking that she is pretending to coyness in order to raise her price, he offers her a handsome settlement if she will be his mistress, having, as he does, "no great

notion of virtue, especially among people of her sphere" (3 2). His attentions become so annoying to her that Louisa leaves her job and becomes the paid companion of a wealthy young lady. Mr. B— -n, obviously, feels that Louisa*s poverty gives him a right to insult her, an attitude that is confirmed by Camilla in Miss Fielding's David Simple. "Men," she remarks, "think our Circumstances gives £sic] them a Liberty to shock our Ears with Proposals ever so dis­ honourable" (II, ^6). Charlotte Summers, the fortunate parish girl, is also obliged to work for her living. Her friend Mrs. Worthy warns her that she must find some way to subsist free from the dangers to which her "Youth and Form" may expose her. False pride and love of independence, says Mrs. Worthy, Induce "a great many young Women to prefer [a precarious dependence on needlework] to the most reputable Service; but the many and innumerable Miscarriages of such infatu­ 108 ated young Creatures, ought to deter others from following their Example.” Charlotte agrees with her friend, and concludes that ”tho' I might by my Needle, make a shift to earn a subsistence, yet in that State I should be entirely left to my own Direction, which I know is not sufficient to protect me from the Snares and Temptations of the World; whereas in reputable Service, my Station will save me from many, and the Advice and Protection of a Mistress enable me

to withstand the rest" (II, 1 6 0 -1 6 3). Domestic service was popular with women in the eight­ eenth century for the same reason that needlework was popular— they had some training in it— and many impoverished women in the novels choose it for a profession, but it had as many disadvantages as did needlework. Dr. Johnson once asked Boswell why women, who worked much harder than men in service and also had to furnish their own clothes, which 112 men did not, were paid less money. Neither Boswell nor Dr. Johnson could provide an answer, but Ida Bridget O'Malley offers one in her history of the feminist movement. She attributes the discrimination to the fact that wives have always been, in effect, unpaid servants to their husbands. A female servant was merely performing woman's natural functions and, hence, custom decreed that she did not deserve equal pay with a man because she was only doing 113 what came naturally to her. ^ The genteel woman who also had the misfortune to be a poor relation was sometimes paid nothing at all for domestic 109 service. She literally worked for her "keep.” Cynthia in Miss Fielding*s David Simple finds herself at one point reduced to this status in a kinswoman's house where her duties are to "keep her House, take care of her Children— overlook all her servants— be ready to sit with her when she call*d her.,— with many more trifling things" (I, 18^). In return for these trifles, the lady of the house gracious­ ly neglects to pay Cynthia any wages, in order to help her keep a proper distance from the common servants. Domestic servants in the novels also suffer from Injured pride; they must endure in silence the whims of a petulant mistress, for one thing. While Lucy Wellers is wavering between a position with a mantua maker and one as a paid companion to a lady, a friend advises her to take the mantua maker because otherwise she "must endure many mortifica­ tions from the captious temper of my lady, and the young ones" (I, ^3). And however unsympathetic Fielding and his readers may be to the lecherous Mrs, Slipslop, no one can deny that she puts up with a great deal of bad temper from Lady Booby. In addition, the domestic servant was a victim of social snobbery. Lucy Wellers, whose father was a gentle­ man, finds herself looked down upon by her employer's friends after she accepts a job as a paid companion. A Miss Wilsmore tells Lucy's employer Mrs. Goodalls Though you, madam, have condescended to honour the girl with a regard that amazes us all, you cannot expect, that your friends will carry their complaisance so far as to level them­ selves with a girl maintained by charity. 110

. , . And I thought you very kind to take her into your house, as an object of charity; and imagined you designed her for an assistant to your house-keeper. But it never could enter into my imagination, that you would think her a proper companion for me (I, 1?2). And Tom Jones' London landlady, Mrs. Miller, relates that her sister had been forced to accept a position as waiting maid to a nouveau riche pawnbroker's daughter, who used the girl so barbarously, "often upbraiding her with her birth and poverty, calling her in derision a gentlewoman" that she died within a year (III, 111). Injured pride, however, was not the worst that the domestic servant had to endure; she also had to contend with imperiled virtue. The determined pursuit of Pamela by Squire B. is, perhaps, the most extreme example of this, but Richardson very explicitly points out that hers is not an isolated case. Pamela writes her parents that there have recently been no less than three lyings-in of maids at the home of "'Squire Martin, in the Grove," as well as two or three more at houses within a ten-mile radius of Squire B's. One can see, says Pamela, "what hardships poor Maidens go thro' whose Lot it is to go out to Service" (I, 90). Richardson obviously Intends here to move the reader to sympathize with the plight of the working girl, but even when a novelist has no such intention, his descrip­ tion of the seduction of a servant maid in an episode meant to serve another purpose can have the incidental effect of making the reader aware of her helpless position. Ill

In John Cleland's Memoirs of a Coxcomb, the hero, Sir William, seduces his aunt's maid Diana, an ignorant and affected girl. Having picked up a few crumbs of learning while waiting on tables at a country boarding school, she gives herself "an air of superiority to the common run of servants in the country." Had she not been so pretty, remarks Sir William, she would have been insufferable. In short, Sir William seduces Diana, despite her "theatrical protestations of a most inviolable virtue" (55-7). We as readers are not supposed to sympathize particularly with the hypocritical and pretentious Diana, but even in her case we are aware that an injury has been done to an ignorant and unprotected young woman. The moral is made more explicit when Sir William later meets a prostitute in London who turns out to be "no other than the individual Diana; once my Diana, and now any body's Diana" (129). He faces the fact that "whatever her fault might be," he was originally the author of it (131), and he tries to repair the damage he has done by settling an annuity on her. Lustful employers were not the only threat to the serving maid's chastity. The country girl coming up to the city to get a job was often victimized by the so-called "brothel rooks" who frequented the London inn-yards where the wagons from the country stopped. These madams looked over the passengers, and any reasonably attractive women were decoyed into a brothel on the pretence that they were being offered employment in reputable households. The 112 first painting in Hogarth’s The Harlot’s Progress shows the robust and innocent Moll Huckabout, just descended from the wagon, being inveigled by an old procuress, while the aged lecher who wants to buy her lurks behind the door of the inn and rubs his hands in anticipation. The fate of Hogarth’s Moll is very nearly what befalls Lucy, the heroine of Chetwood’s The Virgin Widow, who comes to London after the death of her parents "in Hopes of getting a Place in some honest, virtuous Family." On her arrival at the wagon depot, she is met by two women "who by their smooth words, and fair Promises," says Lucy, "prevailed upon me to go with them, which I did with Pleasure, thinking myself very 1 1 ^ fortunate to light of a Place, the Moment I came to Town.'" Lucy’s first night in the household disabuses her of any notions as to her good fortune, and she escapes only through the intervention of the merchant Thompson, who had seen her enticed away from the wagon and had followed the procuress* coach. Should a young woman seeking a job manage by some good fortune to avoid the brothel-rooks in the inn-yard, she still had to encounter them at the intelligence office. An intelligence office combined the functions of an employ­ ment agency and the classified ad section of a daily news­ paper. Here for the payment of a fee ranging generally from threepence to a shilling, buyers and sellers or employees and employers could register and be brought together, hopefully to the satisfaction of both parties. 113

On February 1 9, 17^9, the Fielding brothers, John and Henry, together with Saunders Welch, high constable of Holborn, opened such an establishment, called the Universal Register Office; one of its purposes, as explained in an announcement in the Public Advertiser of October 2, 1755. was to save the innocent from the big-city con men. To all strangers who come to London to transact business or for employment, and especially servants who come out of the country. Whereas it too frequently happens that persons who come from the country to London either to transact some little business, or to be employed in the station of servants or otherwise, become the too easy prey of gamblers and bawds and are ruined before they know where they are, for want of hav­ ing such friends and acquaintances in town as might inform them or guard them against the numberless artifices practised by the wicked here, to deceive the unwary, and betray the innocent. The Fielding brothers recommend that the innocent and the unwary apply to their office and they seem to have attempted to render the protection that they advertise. But it is in just such an office run by an elderly woman "with all the gravity and brow of a petty minister of State" that Fanny Hill comes to grief. She pays her "preliminary shilling" and is bashfully awaiting her interview, when, lifting her eyes, she tells us, "they met full tilt with those of a lady (for such my extreme innocence pronounc'd her) sitting in a corner of the room, dress'd in a velvet mantle . . . with her bonnet off; squab-fat, red-faced,

and at least fifty" (36-37). This is the madam who lures 114

Fanny into the first of many brothels by pretending that she has come to hire a maid. Most novelists who send their female characters out to earn a living send them either to domestic service or to some trade where they can ply their needles. Despite the. disadvantages of these occupations, which the novelists clearly recognized (and of which their readers must also have become increasingly aware), they, at least, offered some degree of respectability when compared with other employments by which the destitute female could live. Crime was one such way that many women seem to have taken. The Gentleman’s Magazine records almost every year the conviction and execution of women for robbery, felony or counterfeiting. An enterprising Mrs. Matthews was even jailed on suspicion of highway robbery— she was accused

of robbing the Western Mail on February 8, 17*14 (XIV, 1 6 7). Female criminals in the novels are usually prostitutes who have been forced by venereal disease to turn to thieving. Roderick Random's Miss Williams speaks from experience when she thus describes "the harlot's progress": . . . she Infects her admirers, her situation is public; she is avoided, neglected, unable to support her usual appearance, which however she strives to maintain as long as possible; her credit fails; she is obliged to retrench and become a night-walker; her malady gains ground; she tampers with her constitution, and ruins it; her complexion fades; she grows nauseous to everybody; finds herself reduced to a starving condition; is tempted to pick pockets; is detected; committed to Newgate. 115 Should such a woman escape execution or transportation, says Miss Williams, she takes to gin to allay the pangs of cold and hunger, "degenerates into a brutal insensibility, rots and dies upon a dunghill." After reading Smollett's vivid description, no reader could fail to react, with "sympathy and compassion" as Roderick does, or to agree with him that these women are "unfortunate, not criminal" (I, 193-19^)• In Sir Charles Grandison, Harriet's servant Wilson tells of a farmer's daughter, "a pretty creature" with "a very pious turn," who had been seduced by one of the local gentry. "I saw her," says Wilson, "about half a year ago in St. Martin's Round-house, taken up as a common prostitute, and charged with picking a pocket." (I, 26o). Kimber's Joe Thompson, upon first coming up to London as a linen-draper's apprentice, had been seduced by his master's maid Nanny. Nanny later goes the usual course of the prostitute, is infected with venereal disease, loses her customers and is forced to steal. She is tried at the Old Bailey and sentenced to transportation (1 0 5 ). For the woman who objected to outright crime but was still not too particular about her reputation, acting and writing were possible professions. Acting was perhaps the most lucrative one open to her in the eighteenth century; it was also a profession in which she was paid wages that compared favorably with those of her male colleagues. In 1709, Anne Oldfield earned £^ per week, a salary topped only by Colley Cibber's £5. Not even Thomas Betterton earned 116 more than Mrs. Oldfield. Some thirty years later Kitty Clive was making £525 per year, while David Garrick himself earned only £630. Kitty Clive was successful enough to be able to support her entire family after her scapegrace father William Raftor, the son of an Irish gentleman, had dissipated his fortune. She began her working career as a domestic servant to a Miss Eleanor Knowles and was "discovered11 while singing as she scrubbed the front steps of Miss Knowles' 117 house. Had Mrs. Clive not had the daring to take a job on the stage, it is doubtful that the Raftors would have lived their days in the affluent comfort that they did. And her step did take daring. The escapades of Nell Gwyn and her felloxT actresses of the Restoration stage had tarnished the reputation of the profession so badly that the prejudice 118 still lingered in the 1740's. No one among this first generation of English novelists seems to have thought so lightly of his heroine's reputation that he allowed her to go on the stage to earn her living. In an age when Dr. Johnson could assert that portrait painting was indecorous for a woman, an actress must have seemed like a scarlet woman. Novel heroines are often driven to desperate expedients (Sarah Fielding's Camilla in David Simple actual­ ly goes out in rags to beg on the streets [II, 42-3]])# but none of them go so far as to become actresses. Thomas Mozeen's Young Scarron is the story of a troupe of strolling players who tour the provinces during the summer, and his hero Valentine joins them after his father turns him out, 117 but the stage is not even considered as a refuge for his heroine Diana. Evidently, good women just did not become

actresses. A further drawback to acting as a profession for women was the fact that it required some degree of talent, as did writing, another possible occupation for the impoverished gentlewoman. Those who have read some of the justly neglected minor novels used in this study (The History of Sophia

Shakespear leaps instantly to mind) may argue that writing seems to have required no talent at all, but most of these works do show some degree of proficiency, however small, in grammar, characterization and narrative technique. Unlike the actress, however, the authoress could guard her privacy

by publishing anonymously. Women who wrote novels and plays seem to have suffered, just as actresses did, for the reputations of their predeces­ sors. The only reasonably successful and well-known female writers of fiction at the outset of the century were Eliza Haywood (1693-1756) and Mary Manley (1672-1724) whose irregular lives prejudiced the profession of letters against the genteel women who followed them. Eliza Haywood eloped from her husband on 26 November 1721, according to an advertisement in the Postboy for that year, spent some time as an actress on the Dublin stage and gave birth to two Illegitimate children. Mrs. Manley's husband turned out to be a bigamist who deserted her at the birth of their child, and she eventually "went into keeping" with one 118

Sir Thomas Skipworth. She was arrested on October 29, 1709 for the libelous treatment of some of her contemporaries in her roman & clef entitled The New Atalantls. Both women wrote scandal-mongering fiction on the order of The New Atalantis, but following the new direction which Richardson gave to fiction after 17^0, Mrs, Haywood abandoned scurrility and produced such respectable works as Betsy Thoughtless and Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, Among the English women writing between 1 7 *K) and 175^. however, there were also a few of the new genteel breed, whom necessity forced into a distaste­ ful profession and who were gradually to counteract the public image of the authoress created by Mrs, Haywood and Mrs, Manley, Mary Collyer says in the Dedication to her Death of Abel that she has taken up her pen solely ’'to contribute to the support and education of [her^ children"^*^ and Sarah Fielding states that she wrote David Simple because of "Distress in her Circumstances: which she could not so well remove by any other Means in her Power" (I, iv). The tone of Miss Fielding's preface is apologetic, as though ?he is 120 aware of doing something not quite "nice," but her sacrifice of her sensibility cleared the way for the eminently respect­ able Fanny Burney and for Parson Austen's daughter Jane within the next fifty years. Decorum, therefore, doubtless accounts in part for the novelists* reluctance to allow their heroines to become actresses or writers. In addition, these were unusual occupations, and casting a heroine as a lady novelist or 119 an actress would have detracted from the realistic Illusion the novelists were striving for. Needleworkers and maid­ servants were believable because the Georgian public encountered them every day, but they would probably have reacted to a novelist or an actress as we today would react to a female sky-diver. These occupations were just a little too exotic. Then, too, most of the novelists were bent upon criticizing economic helplessness that made life nearly unbearable for the self-supporting woman. Actresses and novelists had to put up with social snobbery, but economically their lives were comparatively easy.

PROSTITUTION For minor characters in the novels there was one other profession, namely, the oldest one, and many a fictional

female between 17^0 and 1 75^ was forced to sell herself— often with her creator's complete sympathy. Those who, like me, have always taken Richardson as a reliable guide to the eighteenth-century's attitude toward the fallen woman will be surprised to learn that one slip did not necessarily mean that she was lost forever. She could be, and often was, rehabilitated both in real life and in fiction, and the cause of her prostitution is usually recognized, with sympathy, as poverty or a faulty educa­ tion. Early in the century Steele had criticized the prudish for undue censoriousness toward "women of the town." In

Spectators 266 and 2?^ he maintains that they are to be 120 pitied rather than condemned since thqsr usually become prosti­ tutes through ignorance, poverty or "the Violence of Passion in Its Beginning well grounded," rather than through innate depravity. This enlightened opinion was echoed by Sir John Fielding in his Account of the Origins and Effects of a Police (1758), in which he points out that most of the Inmates of brothels or the prostitutes taken off the streets by the constables and brought before him for examination were under eighteen years of age and many of them were between twelve and sixteen. Horace Walpole confirms this when he notes that on his visit to the Magdalen Hospital he saw two or three girls who appeared to be no more than 121 twelve years old. "Who," asks Fielding, "can say that one of these poor children had been prostitutes through viciousness?" On the contrary, he says, the cause is "poverty and illiterateness." A drunken father leaves a mother with "many helpless children" and no way of support­ ing them except "the wash-but, green-stall or barrow," and just as little boys "become thieves from necessity, their 122 sisters are whores from the same cause." The girl of higher social and economic status than the washerwoman’s daughter could also be a victim of economics. After the one slip, she had no other recourse besides prostitution; this, at least, is the experience of M.S., the first 123 entrant to the Magdalen Hospital. A clergyman's daughter, seduced and left to support her illegitimate child, she is "willing to earn a livelyhood [sic] by the most humiliating 121 employ," but finds that no one will hire her because she has no recommendation and no one willing to give her "a character." The one false step brings her to "a situation that no one would even condescend to give a civil answer to, much less take into their houses, in any sort of employment." She then makes an appeal to the prudish of her own sex in which she emphasizes the prostitute's economic misfortune: To you ye ungenerous of my own sex, let me appeal, and let me tell you there are many unfortunate females in this very predicament, who are daily and nightly under the dire necessity of prostitution, for the sake of bare support; and who would gladly be encour­ aged to embrace any situation, rather than continue in that which they have unfortunate­ ly been brought into . . . (1 6 ^-5).^ Very like the story of M.S. is that of Dr. Johnson's Mlsella to whom he devoted two numbers of the Rambler in 1751. Orphaned and impoverished, she is seduced by the wealthy relative who takes her in, and left by him to support her illegitimate child. She tries at first to earn money by needlework, but Is finally forced into prostitution and beggary just to keep herself and her child alive. Misella recommends that women like herself who are precluded from earning a living in England be given an opportunity to immigrate to the colonies where they will have a chance to 125 be respectable self-supporting human beings. This recognition of the economic causes of prostitu­ tion led to the opening in 1758 of the Magdalen Hospital for Penitent Prostitutes. The chief founders of this institution were Jonas Hanway, John Fielding and Saunders 122

Welch, and Its success justified their most favorable prognosti­ cations. During the first ten years of operation, 1,036 women were admitted with the following results:

509 reconciled to friends, placed in trades or in service with reputable families 38 lunatics 150 dismissed at their own request 28 died 37 never returned from hospitals where they were sent to be cured, usually of venereal disease 201 discharged for faults and irregularities 73 in residence Only the 201 who were dismissed for “faults and irregular­ ities” can be considered as total failures. Many of those dismissed at their own request went into “industrious and honest Employments and Services," and 65 of those dismissed x 26 honorably were respectably married in 1 7 6 8. The hospital authorities made every effort to help these women leave their past lives and begin new ones. Any woman who wanted to conceal her true name was allowed to do so; no inquiries into her family were permitted, and no information given out without her consent. After being taught a trade, usually needlework, or given training in domestic service, the hospital found her a job, preferably outside London, and gave her a guinea if she continued in this same job for one year. 127 Before 1758 the only refuge for a prostitute had been in a house of correction. These establishments were original­ ly intended as an aid In the administration of the poor relief laws. Here the destitute could be kept busy, given work whereby they might contribute to their own keep and, If necessary, have their characters reformed. By 1758, how­ ever, the House of Correction had degenerated to the point 128 where it was indistinguishable from the common jail* it had become what Henry Fielding called in the Covent-Garden Journal "a School rather for the Improvement, than for the Correction of Debauchery." "I know a Magistrate," he continues, "who never sends a Woman thither, while she retains even any external Mark of Decency; and I have heard him declare, that he never yet saw a Woman totally abandoned and lost to all Sense of Shame, who had not 129 already finished her Education in that College." The early English novelists were among the most out­ spoken critics of their society’s treatment of the prostitute and the seduced woman. Fictional heroines do not, as a rule lose their chastity, be the cause rape, seduction or economic necessity. Fanny Hill and Clarissa are exceptions, but the former is the heroine of a pornographic novel, glorifying the joys of sex, and the latter is not allowed to survive the experience. "Death before Dishonour" (or "Death after Dishonour," in Clarissa’s case) is the device on the banner that Clarissa and Pamela carry before them, and this is the standard attitude of heroines and of many lesser women in the novels. Chetwood’s Lucretia in The Twins tells her lustful kidnapper that she is "determin'd to suffer Death, rather than lose her 130 Honour," a sentiment echoed by the heroine of The History of Cornelia, another kidnap victim, who declares that though 124-

"she was bound in duty to preserve her life, £she] was obliged by ties not less strong, to preserve her innocence" (81). Minor characters in the novels, however, could and did survive the loss of chastity and still retain the novelists approval. The good-hearted prostitute is not strictly a phenomenon of twentieth-century literature. Smollett's Lady of Quality is, perhaps, the best known fictional representative of the virtuous though "not strictly chaste" woman. She is the only person besides Peregrine Pickle who obeys the "dictates of her humanity" (4-31) and comes to aid the impoverished widow with new-born twins. And when Peregrine himself falls on hard times, it is the Lady of Quality who rushes to his assistance: She had seen him courted and cultivated in the sun-shine of his prosperity; but she knew from sad experience, how all those insect followers shrink away in the winter of distress. Her compassion represented him as a poor unhappy lunatic, destitute of all the necessaries of life, dragging about the ruins of human nature, and exhibiting the spectacle of blasted youth, to the scorn and abhorrence of his fellow-creatures. Aking with these charitable considerations, she found means to learn in what part of the town he lodged; and laying aside all superfluous ceremony, went in a hackney-coach to his door .... she not only made him a tender of assistance, but presenting a bank-note for a considerable sum, insisted upon his acceptance of it (673-4-). Shebbeare's Sarah Standish, deserted by her keeper is helped by a "Girl of the Tom" who "was now in keeping, and in Abundance of all things," a girl whose heart "was ten times more open to the Sufferings of her Pellow-creatures, than Thousands of those whose Fortunes have been made by 125 Marriage” (II, 2 6 3). Shebbeare and Smollett are both assert­ ing that a woman who has lost her chastity can still, like a female Tom Jones, retain a higher kind of virtue. The frequency with which the novelists interrupt their stories to narrate the tale of some minor female characters life of infamy demonstrates their interest in the subject. The slightly sensational nature of the material probably accounts for some of this interest— sex will always sell a novel— but the novelists also have a didactic purpose when they demand sympathy for these women and emphasize the possibility of reform. William Chaigneau pauses for near­ ly thirty pages in the midst of Jack Connor to tell the story of Polly Gunn, reformed prostitute, who after her youthful seduction, went the usual downhill road until she was haunting the byways of Covent Garden half-starved. Learning from experience, Polly saves money and retires to the country after fifteen years with an inoome of £200 per year. Her library contains over 300 volumes of history, poetry and works of divinity, all of which she has read. And, Chaigneau tells us, ”tho her former Life is well known in the Village, her Sincerity and Virtue are so well vouch*d by her Conduct, that some of the best Families have lately visited her, and she them” (I, 256-2840. John Cleland*s Miss Wilmore in Memoirs of a Coxcomb is a female libertine who reforms, takes her place in society and by her good conduct brings ”all those to respect her, whose respeot was worth the oaring for ” (82). Roderick Random*s 126 friend Miss Williams is another prostitute who reforms with Roderick*s help and leads a respectable life. The novelists also claimed that a seduced woman was perfectly oapable of becoming a good wife, as does Joe Thompson’s Mrs. Modish. The best known example of such a woman, who loved not wisely but too well, is Fielding’s Miss Nancy Miller, seduced by Tom Jones* friend young Nightingale. When the latter claims that to marry a whore, even of one’s own making, Is a shameful act, Tom points out to him that Nancy has "sinned more against prudence than virtue” (III, 12*0, and it is through Tom’s efforts that Nightingale is finally persuaded to marry Nancy-an act of which the author thoroughly approves. In Shebbeare*s The Marriage Act, the heroine's friend Fanny has an illegitimate child, but later marries her lover and lives a happy and exemplary life. Her father, the Reverend Mr. Thoroughgood, expresses the author's approved sentiments when he says that "There are many Crimes, in my Opinion, attended with much worse Circumstances than [fornication^, and that Parents behold it with too scrupulous an Eye, and punish it with too much Severity” (II, 13). The novels, as reflectors of the actual social condi­ tions of the 17 *K)’s and 1 7 5 0 's, also show the economic causes of prostitution. Fielding’s Jenny Jones thus Justifies to Allworthy her living with Captain Waters, though not his wifej And consider, sir, on my behalf, what Is in 127

the power of a woman stripped of her reputa­ tion and left destitute; whether the good- natured world will suffer such a stray sheep to return to the road of virtue, even if she was never so desirous (III, 330), Miss Williams in Roderick Random earns a precarious living as an independent, soliciting for herself on the streets until she is taken for debt and confined to Bridewell. There she meets a brothel keeper who offers to employ her upon payment of three guineas a week and rental of any clothes and ornaments that should be supplied to her, “These were hard terms,” remarks Miss Williams, "but not to be rejected by one who was turned out helpless and naked into the wide world, without a friend to pity or assist her” (I, 187). And Edward Kimber’s Joe Thompson in later life meets Nanny, his first inamorata, who had been a kept mistress at the time Joe originally knew her. Her keeper left her, she tells Joe* "in want and misery, which obliged [her] to seek a subsistence by the most abhorred of ways, that of prostitu­ tion, at an house of ill fame in Covent Garden" (105). Jenny Jones, Miss Williams and Nanny all express their ardent desires to do something else for a living, but stress that they are not allowed to. Sinoe they must feed them­ selves and put some sort of roof over their heads, they have no alternative. Given the picture of the prostitute’s life that we get from the novels, it is no wonder that most of them long for some other occupation, Smollett’s Miss Williams comments on "How miserable is the condition of the courtesan, whose business it is to soothe, suffer, and 128 obey the dictates of rage, Insolence, and lustI" (I, 183). In return for this disadvantage, the profession offered not even a living wage. Miss Williams often returns at night hungry to her garret, but, at least, she has a garret to go to. On her nightly patrols of the London streets she encounters other women even more unfortunate than she is, •'naked wretches reduced to rags and filth, huddled together like swine in the corner of a dark alley" (I, 191-193). Besides being underpaid, the profession was unhealthy. The "constant pursuit of Qthis]] filthy trade," notes Kimber's Joe Thompson, "totally demolishes her health, and she rots away by piecemeal, and at length is too often exposed and abandoned to a shocking untimely end, by the course of the slowly stealing corruption" (36), The cure for venereal disease was painful, expensive, slow and uncertain. Klmber's Nanny is forced "to undergo a salivation" which is managed so unskillfully that it ruins her looks and her health, thus forcing her to pick pockets for a living. Even the rumor that Smollett's Miss Williams has venereal disease drives away her customers; she is then foroed into debt and comes as a matter of course to Newgate, The lone non-conformist among the prostitutes is Cleland's Fanny Hill, whose description of Mrs, Cole's establishment makes it seem more like a vacation resort than a brothel (16*0. Elsewhere, however, Cleland does see the other— the Joyless side of this life, and his Memoirs of a Coxcomb contains a scathing denunciation of 129 the marketing of human flesh. Sir William and three friends after a play go to finish the remains of the night, to one of those shambles in the neighbourhood, In which, with a barbarism of taste scarce inferior to that of the cannibal markets, human flesh is exposed and set out for sale; and the terms of the craft generally used to put off the goods to their customers, or cheapners, are so near­ ly those of a carcase-butcher, that one may reasonably enough deduce from them the affinity of these genteel trades, "See here, my masters! here is a charming piece of flesh! oh this is a delicate morsel for the spit! here is a substance to cut up, so juicy, so meaty, so young, fresh out of the country, none of your overdriven cattle, neither handled, tainted, nor fly-blown; plump, white, and lovingly worth your money" (1 1 6 ). An unexpected denunciation from the creator of Fanny Hill. Thus, the prostitute and the seduced woman Join the working girl, the marriageable girl and the wife as an object of concern to many eighteenth-century humanitarians, including the first generation of English realistic novelists.

AFTERWORD

Despite the concern for women*s rights that we have seen developing in the early and middle years of the eighteenth century, tradition assigns the beginning of the feminist movement in England to 1792, the year of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ida Bridget O'Malley in her history of feminism calls the Vindication a work that marks "the emergence of the women's movement into conscious life," and sees it as dividing "the centuries in which [women]} had lived an only half conscious life and 130 131 those in which they vindicated their full humanity." In her study of feminism in the nineteenth-oentury novel, Patricia Thomson calls 1792 "the year that gave the feminist movement unwilling "birth, with the publication of Mary 132 Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women." In a sense, these historians are correct in using 1792 as a beginning because the earlier interest in women’s rights did not constitute a "movement" at all. Women were neither organized nor militant; they did not parade down the Strand nor did they ohaln themselves to the gates of the Houses of Parliament. But a select few and their more enlightened male contemporaries did oome to realize and to assert that many of the injustices under which they suffered could be eliminated by legislation or by a change in social attitude. Almost everything that Mary Wollstonecraft says about the subjection of women had already been said or implied many times before. She sees women "In the grand light of human creatures, who, in common with men, are placed on this earth to unfold their faculties." According to her, a faulty education is the primary cause of women's subordinate position. "Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it," she demands, "and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing," and she further maintains that "ignorance is a frail base for virtue." She finds it 131 deplorable that because women are trained for no profession, they are forced to marry whether they will or no. "In the middle rank of life, men, in their youth, are prepared for professions, and marriage is not considered as the grand feature in their lives; whilst women, on the contrary, have no other scheme to sharpen their faculties. . . . To rise in the world, and have the liberty of running from pleasure to pleasure, they must marry advantageously, and to this object their time is sacrificed, and their persons often legally prostituted." She recommends opening all business and professions to them, not excluding politics and medicine. And finally Mary Wollstonecraft comes to the aid of the fallen woman and expresses her compassion for women "by one error torn from all those affections and relationships that improve the heart and mind" because society condemns them for an act that "does not frequently even deserve the name 133 of error," and thus drives them into prostitution. Much as I admire Mary Wollstonecraft, I can only wish that she had considered the evidence a bit more carefully before she declared that For man and woman, truth, if I understand the meaning of the word, must be the same; yet in the fanciful female character, so prettily drawn by poets and novelists, demanding the sacrifice of truth and sincerity, virtue becomes a relative idea, having no other foundation than utility, and of that utility men pretend arbitrarily to Judge, shaping it to their own convenience.1-^ She has, I believe, misjudged many of the novelists* female characters, and I suspect that in her irritation at Rousseau, 132 * she has mistaken Emile for novels In general. As we have seen, the novelists of the 17^0's and 1750’s advanced much the same objections to society's treatment of women as those she makes, and In the forty-year interval between the novels used In this study and the publication of the Vindication, major and minor novelists continued to concern themselves with the rights of women, Just as their predecessors had done in the 17*K)'s. Goldsmith's Olivia Primrose, for instance, is a fallen woman, whose father exclaims, "Tho' the vicious forsake thee, there is yet one in the world that will never forsake thee." Dr. Primrose is obviously his author's vehicle for criticizing the censorious attitude of the times toward "the one fatal slip," Miss Emily Atkins, in Mackenzie's Man of Feeling

(1 7 7 1 ) is seduced, abandoned by her seducer and forced by economic necessity to become a prostitute until rescued by

the hero Harley, In Fanny Burney's Evelina (1 7 7 8) the heroine's mother is abandoned by her husband because her fortune is not what he expected it to be, and most of the problems which Evelina herself must confront result from her father's refusal to recognize her as his daughter, leaving her destitute except for the help of her guardian Mr. Villars. Mrs. Inchbald's A Simple Story (1791) also deals with the problems of a mother and daughter, banished from their home, and blames the mother's immorality on "the pernicious effects of a faulty Education." In these novels many women fight courageously against injustice and they refuse to sacrifice either truth or sincerity to utility, as Mary Wollstonecraft accuses them of doing. When women are weak, the novelists clearly indicate either that the fault lies, at least, partially with society for refusing to educate them or that society takes too harsh a view of their errors. Thus, the Vindication cannot have oome as much of a shook to the really confirmed eighteenth-century novel reader. Too many heroines had already conquered or been subdued by the very injustices that Mary Wollstonecraft castigates. 13^

NOTES

1 Peter Gay, The Enlightenment; An Interpretation (New York, 1 9 6 6), p. 1 1 6 .

2 Eliza Haywood, The Fortunate Foundlings; Being the Genuine History of Colonel M rs, and His Sister, Madam du P y. the Issue of the Hon. Ch es M-— rs» Son of the Late Duke of B 1 d (London, 1744) •

^Robert Palfrey Utter and Gwendolyn Bridges Need­ ham, Pamela's Daughters (New York, 1936), pp. 1 -1 8. 4 A. R. Humphreys, "The 'Rights of Woman' in the Age of Reason," MLR, XLI (1946), 257-

^Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel. Chapter 2. 6 Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England, 1650- 1760 (Boston, 1920), pp. 430-431- 7 Social England, ed. H. D. Traill and J. S. Mann, 6 vols” (London, 1902-1904), V, 482.

Q An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex. In Which are inserted the Characters of a Pedant, a Squire, a Beau, a Vertuoso, a Poetaster, a Clty-Crltlck, &c. In a Letter to a Lady. Written by a Lady. (London, I6 9 6), p. 1 1 . 9 7The Tatler, ed. Alexander Chalmers, 5 vols. (London, 1 8 0 3). IV, 142. 10 The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1965), IV, 405. 11 Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England, p. 3 1 5, notes that the Sophia pamphlets have been attributed to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and to Lady Sophia Fermor, second wife of Lord Carteret. 135

12 Mary Granville Delany, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany; With Interesting Reminiscences of King George the Third and Queen Charlotte, ed. Lady LlanoverT 3 vols. ("London, lb6i)t II. 575-

^Hester Chapone, The Posthumous Works of Mrs. Chapone. Containing Her Correspondence with Mr. Richardson; a Series of Letters to Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, and Some Fugitive Pieces. Never Before Published, 2 vols. (London, l807)» II, 116-117.

1 Samuel Richardson, The History of Sir Charles Grandison, 6 vols. (Oxford^ 1929-1931)» V, *K)6-407.

^Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady, 8 vols. (Oxford, 1930), I, 79.

•^Delany, Autobiography. Ill, 257.

*^Quoted in Ada Wallas, Before the Blue Stockings (London, 1929), p. 127* 1 8 M. Phillips and W. S. Tomkinson, English Women In Life and Letters (London and New York, 1926), pp. 195- 196. 1 Q ^Quoted in Rosamond Bayne-Powell, Travellers in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1951), P* 109. ?0 The Works of Hannah More, 11 vols. (London, 1853), III, 55. pi Daniel Defoe, An Essay upon Projects (London, Paris, Melbourne, 189*0, p. 22.

pp John Wesley, The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M., ed. Nehemiah Curnock, 8 vols. (London, 1938), III, 39.

2-^The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. F. Elrington Ball* o vols. (London, 1910-191*0, V, 70. 136

John Harold Whiteley, Wesley's England, a Survey of XVIIIth Century Social and Cultural Conditions (London, 1938), p.~5k. 2 ^ x vJean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile (London and New York, 1938), p. 328.

2^Samuel Richardson, Pamela? or. Virtue Rewarded, k vols. (Oxford, 1929). IV, 320.

2^Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, ed. W. E. Henley, 3 vols. (New York, 1902), I, 33. 28 The History of Lucy Wellers, 2 vols. (London, 1753). II. 101 -1 0 2 .

2^Sarah Fielding, The Adventures of David Simple: Containing an Account of His Travels through the Cities of London and Westminster, in Search of a Real Friend. 2 vols. (London, 1744), I, 188-1 8 9.

■^Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. George B. Hill and L. F. Powell, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1934-1964), V, 2 2 6.

■^Letitia van Lewen Pilkington, Memoirs of Mrs. Letitia Pilklngton. 1712-1750. Written by Herself. Introduction by Iris Barry (New York, 1928), pp. 79- 82.

32Quoted in John Langdon-Davles, A Short History of Women (London, 1928), p. 331.

-^Lord Chesterfield, The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope. 4th Earl of Chesterfield, ed. Bonamy Dobree, 6 vols. (London and New York, 1932) • III, 159*1-.

^Defoe, An Essay upon Projects, p. l64.

■^Henry Fielding, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams, ed. W. E. Henley (New York, 1902), pp. Il8, 126 and 149. 137

•^The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,, ed. Lord Whamcliffe, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (London, 1866), II, 276.

^ The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. Bobert Halsband, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1 966-1 9 6 7), II, 450.

-^Boswell*s Life of Johnson, III, 3.

^^Emily J. Climenson, Elizabeth Montagu, the Queen of the Bluestockings, Her Correspondence from 17^0- 1761. i vols. (London, 1906), I,

^°John Cleland, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, ed. Peter Quennell (New York, 19^3). P. $0.

^•Marquis of Halifax, The Lady's New-Year1s Gift; or. Advice to a Daughter, in The Complete Works of George Savlle, First Marquess of Halifax, ed. Walter Btaleigh (Oxford, 1 9 1 2 ), pp. 8-17. This bald recital of Halifax1s five main points has probably given a false impression of the tone of his work. He is not gloating over woman's inferior status; he is advising a well- beloved, but unfortunately subordinate, female child in the ways of the world, in the hope that he can make her life as little unhappy as possible. hp Delany, Autobiography, III, 25.

^Climenson, Elizabeth Montagu, I, 113.

IlIl , Eliza Haywood, The Female Spectator, ^ vols. (London, 1 7 6 6), I, 6*K

^Preface to Sarah Fielding, Familiar Letters Between the Principal Characters in Dayl(T"~31 mple and Some Others. jo Which Is Added, A Vision. By the Author of tiavfcC Simple. 2 vols. (London, 1^4^), I, xvii.

^ S ir William Blacks tone, Commentaries on the Laws of England. 12th ed., 4- vols. (Dublin, 179^). I. ^6 8. 138

k7 'Ida Beatrice O'Malley, Women In Subjection; A Study of the Lives of English Women before 1832 (London, 1933)t P* 19* William E. H. Lecky, A History of England In the Eighteenth Century. 8 vols” (New York, 1882-1890), I, 548. k8 In the preceding discussion, I am indebted to O'Malley, Women in Subjection, pp. 23-24, and W. L. Blease, The Emancipation of English Women (London, 1910), pp. 10-13. kg 7Samuel Johnson, Complete Works, I, 115*

-^Boswell's Life of Johnson, II, 471*

-^Pilkington, Memoirs, p. 393* Co -' Chapone, Posthumous Works, II, 59•

-^Delany, Autobiography, III, 115.

-^Sarah Fielding, David Simple, I, 204.

^Edward Kimber, The Life and Adventures of Joe Thompson; A Narrative Founded on Fact (London, 17&3), p. 8 9.

-^Eliza Haywood, The History of Miss Betsy Thought­ less (London, 1784), p. 243.

^ R . Brimley Johnson, Bluestocking Letters (London, 1 9 2 6), p. 40.

-^Pilklngton, Memoirs, p. 396.

-^Chapone, Posthumous Works, II, 58-59*

^°Eliza Haywood, The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy (London, 1785). P* 22. 139

^Shepherd Braithwhite Kitchin, A History of Divorce (London, 1912), pp. 18O-1 8 1 . 6? Pilklngton, Memoirs, p. 396.

^Gellert Spencer Alleman, Matrimonial Law and the Materials of Restoration Comedy (Wallingford, Pennsyl­ vania, 19^2), pp. 112-113. 6 kQuoted in O'Malley, Women In Subjection, p. 25*

^Quoted by James L. Clifford, Introduction to Peregrine Pickle (London, 196^), p. rvli. 66 Iris Barry, Introduction to Pilklngton, Memoirs, pp. 10 -1 1 . 6 7 Samuel Johnson, Complete Works, I, 253* 68 Thomas Mozeen, Young Soarron (London, 1752).

^ London Magazine, XIII (June, 17^)# 205.

"^Henry Fielding, The True Patriot, ed. Miriam A. Locke (University, Alabama, 1964), XXIII (April 8, 17^6).

^Delany, Autobiography, III, 7 3.

"^Johnson, Complete Works, I, 228-229. 7S ^Chapone, Posthumous Works, II, 121-123.

"^Preface to The History of Honorla (London, 175^). unnumoered.

"^John Shebbeare, The Marriage Act. A Novel, Con­ taining a Series of Interesting Adventures, 2 vols. (London, 1754)• ^Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century. I, 531* 77 ''C. J. S. Thompson, Love, Marriage and Romance In Old London (London, 1 9 3 6), p. 8 5. ~

^Whiteley, Wesley’s England, p. 57*

"^DeSaussure. A Foreign View of England, p. 3^3-

Oa Delany, Autobiography. II, 3^8-353.

^Lecky, A. History of England In the Eighteenth Century, I, 533» and Alleman, Matrimonial Law and the Materials of Restoration Comedy, p. 3 8. 8? The History of Sophia Shakespear (London, 1753)» p.

®-^Sir John Hill, The Adventures of Mr. George Edwards, a Creole (London, 17$$).

8U , John Cleland., Memoirs of a Coxcomb (New York, 1963)t PP* 174-177• Whiteley, Wesley’s England, p. 301, notes the marriage in 1753 of Catherine Powell, aged 17* to Robert Allen of Chester, "an eminent pawnbroker aged 75*" One certainly suspects the economic motive in this case.

^ The Adventures of Capt. Greenland. Written in Imitation of All Those Wise. Learned. Witty and Humourous Authors. Who either Already Have, or Hereafter May Write in the Same Stile and Manner, ^ vols. (London, 1752), IV, 1 5 2.

®^Mary Mitchell Collyer, Felicia to Charlotte; Being Letters from a Young Lady in the Country to Her Friend in Town, 2 vols. (London, 1749). It 8 6.

^ The Life of Patty Saunders. Written by Herself (London, 1752), p. 2 6 0 . 1^1

oo Sarah Robinson Scott, The History of Cornelia (London, 1750), pp. 98-99.

^Lecky, A History of England In the Eighteenth Century, I, 209-210.

"^Historical Manuscripts Commission, Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont. Diary of the First Earl of Egmont (Viscount Perclval), 3 vols. (Tondon7~T923Tt III, 307-30B".

"^Quoted in Wallas, Before the Bluestockings, p. 119. One extremely "nice" girl of the 17^0's arranged her own marriage this way. Anne Granville, the sister of Mrs. Delany, wrote to her friend Lady Throckmorton asking for information on Mr. Dewes. "There is a person he is recommended to," she says, "but she is quite a stranger to him and is my friend, and therefore I make an inquiry about him, . . . The person I speak of has no notion of happiness in a married life, but what must proceed from an equality of sentiments and mutual good opinion." (Delany, Autobiography, II, 75-) The "friend" was Anne Granville herself, who met, agreed that she could like and, in due course, married Mr. Dewes.

^2Johnson, Complete Works, II, 26^.

"^Elizabeth Carter, A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot, from the Year 17^1 to 1770. To Which Are Added Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Vesey, between the Years 17&3 and 1787. 4 vols. (London, 1809), II. 13-

•^William Chaigneau, The History of Jack Connor, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London, 1753). II, 7^*

-^Johnson, Complete Works. IV, 112-118.

^ The Female Spectator, I, 2^ff. Mrs. Haywood reiterates this point in I, 2^6. 1^2

9^Watt, The Rise of the Novel, p. 1^5* Mr. Watt cites the OED for information on "spinster."

^Whiteley, Wesley’s England, p. 5^*

^Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1925)* 11^ 100.

^ ^Boswell's Life of Johnson, IV, 33*

^•^The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, ed. W. S. Lewis, 29 vols. to date (New Haven, 193?- 1965)t XI, 26 7. [Emphasis added.]

*02Dorothy Marshall, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Social and Administra­ tive History (London. 192&), p. 164.

^°^Marshall, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 212-213*

R. Plomer, G. H. Bushnell and E. R. McC. Dix, A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers Who Were at Work in England, Scotland^and Ireland from 1726 to 1775 (Oxford, 1932). PP. I-2 6 9.

Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, pp. 16- 17*

*°^Sarah Robinson Scott, The History of Cornelia, pp. ^7-5 6. Another lady who makes good in business is Felicia’s aunt in Felicia to Charlotte. Felicia writes, "The old gentleman, my uncle, who died about seven years ago, left her with four children, and a large estate, but very much incumbered with mortgages, which by her prudent management she has lately paid off" (I, 6).

•^'Phillips and Tomkinson, English Women in Life and Letters, p. 3?^* 1^3

10 ^Quoted, in Langdon-Davies, A Short History of Women, p. 333»

10^John H. Hutchins, Jonas Hanway. 1712-1786 (London, 19^0), p. 12^; and B. Kirkman Gray, A History of English Philanthropy from the Dissolution of the Monasteries to the Taking of the First Census (London, 1905)» P» 1&5-

110Boswell's Life of Johnson. II, 3 6 2.

•^Miss Sarah Standish in Shebbeare's The Marriage Act, seduced and abandoned by her father's clerk, Henry Wright, is recommended to a milliner "engaged in the honourable Profession of Procuring, for her Intimate Friends. . . . This Lady living in one of the Streets of Covent-Garden, had her shop much frequented by Gentlemen, and always filled with pretty Wenches; much such another Place for the Choice of beautiful Girls, as the Repository is for Horses; where each may be seen, bought and warranted sound from the Hands of the Keeper" (II, 26^-2 6 5).

•^2Boswell's Life of Johnson. II, 217»

11 -^O'Malley, Women in subjection, pp. ^3-46.

^^William Rufus Chetwood, "The Virgin Widow" in Six Historical Relations (Dublin, 1755)* P» 102.

**-*Quoted in R. Leslie-Melville, The Life and Work of Sir John Fielding (London, 193^), PP* 21-22. ^Emphasis added. 3 For an account of the functioning of the Universal Register Office, see pp. 8-2 6.

■^Gentleman's Magazine, XIII (October, 17^3) * 553; and (November, 17^3)* 609* lMf-

^Percy H. Fitzgerald, The Life of Mrs. Catherine Clive [1711-17851. with an Account of Her Adventures on and off the Stage . . . Together with Her Corres­ pondence (London. 1 8 6 8), pp. 2-4.

1l8 For a discussion of the success of women as actresses and the prejudices against them, see Phillips and Tomkinson, English Women in Life and Letters, pp. 332-335; and Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England. 1 6 50-1760. p. 8 3.

■^Quoted in Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England. 1650-1760. p. 232.

1 P0Lady Mary Wortley Montagu evidently agreed with Miss Fielding. In 1755 she wrote to her daughter that she pitied Miss Fielding, “constrained by her circum­ stances to seek her bread by a method, I do not doubt, she despises'* (The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. Wharncliffe, II, 2 8 0).

121 Walpole, Correspondence. IX, 27^»

1 PP Summarized in Hutchins, Jonas Hanway. p. 113*

*2 ^Clergymen's daughters were evidently particularly unfortunate in their attempts to earn a living, com­ bining as they did extreme poverty with extreme gentility. Molly Seagrlm's mother was a clergyman's daughter, as were Sophia Western's Mrs. Honour and Charlotte Grand- ison's maid Jenny. Elenor, the young lady whom Ferdinand Count Fathom seduces and eventually marries, was a clergyman's daughter en route to London to go into ser­ vice when she met Fathom. Fielding mentions in a footnote in Tom Jones (I, 201) that Mrs. Seagrim and Mrs. Honour are both "persons of low condition whom we have recorded in this history to have sprung from the clergy. It is to be hoped such instances will, in future ages, when some provision is made for the families of the inferior clergy, appear stranger than they can be thought at present." 1^5

1 pit William Dodd, An Account of the Rise. Progress, and Present State of the Magdalen Hospital, for the Reception of Penitent Prostitutes, ^th ed. (London, 1770;, pp. 1 ^5-l46 and 1^4-165*

12 ^Johnson, Complete Works, III, 353-357, and IV, 1 -8. The Colonies were a dumping ground for undesirables in the eighteenth century just as they were in the nineteenth when Mr. Micawber went to Australia. Clarissa thinks at one point of going abroad if she can find some reputable family to travel with (V, 52); her sister Arabella recommends that she try Pennsylvania (VII, 2 3 6).

A1 ?6 Dodd, An Account of the Rise. Progress, and Present State of the Magdalen Hospital, pp. ii-iii.

1 2 '?Dodd, An Account of the Rise, Progress, and Present State~of the Magdalen Hospital, pp. 405-^08. Horace Walpole on a visit to the Hospital was shown linen and beadwork which the women had made and remarked that they earned about £10 per week by selling these articles (Walpole, Correspondence. IX, 273.

12®BenJamin M. Jones, Henry Fielding as Novelist and Magistrate (London, 1933)* P* 211.

*2<^Henry Fielding, The Covent-Garden Journal, ed. Gerard Edward Jensen, 2 vols. (Reprinted New York, 19640, II. 70.

^•^William Rufus Chetwood, “The Twins: or, The Female Traveler” in Six Historical Relations (Dublin, 1755). P« 8.

1 ^1 0lMalley, Women in Subjection, p. 1 6 7.

^-^atrlcia Thomson, The Victorian Heroine (London, 1956), p. 8. 146

-^Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, 3rd ed. (London, 1796), PP- 4, 44-45, 127- 128 and" 154-157.

•^-^Wollstonecraft, Vindication, p. 106. CHAPTER III

CHILDREN

EDUCATION Just as some of their titles demonstrate the first English novelists* Interest in women, others show their concern with children. The Adventures of a Kidnapped Orphan. The Governess: or the Little Female Academy. The History of Charlotte Summers, the Fortunate Parish Girl. The Fortunate Foundlings. and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling are obvious examples. Their Interest is also indicated by the many heroes and heroines, in addition to those named in the titles, who are mistreated, abandoned or orphaned children. Fanny Hill, Cornelia, David Simple and Lucy Wellers are orphans— as are Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Jack Connor and Patty Saunders, for practical purposes, since all four have been either lost or abandoned by their parents. These novelists are also Just as interested in the education of children as in that of women, and in this they are reflecting a common concern of their age. The movement toward mass education made halting beginnings in 1699 with the inauguration of charity schools by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. As M. G. Jones says in

14-7 148 her history of the charity school movement, "it is difficult to find any interest more continuous and sustained, and, at the same time, more representative of the age than the schools which were established for the children of the poor." 1 By the time Pamela was published, there were nearly 2,000 of 2 these schools throughout England. The chief motive for establishing charity schools is not particularly flattering to the century’s benevolence. The political and religious upheavals of the seventeenth I* century were a grim warning to the upper and middle classes that the poor badly needed training in "social discipline" because their ignorance, in the opinion of their betters, made them "peculiarly susceptible to the poison of rebellion and Infidelity," In keeping with this purpose, the charity sohools taught the children of the poor to read the Bible and the catechism, and occasionally to write and cast accounts.^ The modern consensus is that the schools failed to provide anything approaching what we would call today an adequate education— or what many in the eighteenth century would have called one, for that matter. Fielding certainly had no very favorable opinion of them. His Captain Trent, who pimps for his own wife, was sent at the age of eight years old, to a charity- school, where he remained till he was of the age of fourteen, without making any great proficiency in learning. Indeed it is not very probable he should; for the master, who, in preference to a very learned and proper man, was chosen by a party into this school, the salary of which was upwards of a hundred pounds a-year, had himself never traveled 1^9 through the Latin Grammar, and. was, in truth, a most consummate blockhead (II, 25*0. A later historian has confirmed this Judgment by calling the majority of the schools "dreadful.” "Commonly,” he says, "the teachers were themselves barely literate; they were recruited from the motley ranks of the crippled, the diseased, the chronically unsuccessful in other lines of work." They were ill-paid, they lacked any "temperamental fitness for their Job," and their primary aim was to teach II the children of the poor to know their place. Bad as these schools were, however, they were a beginning of an attempt to educate all children, and the charity schools provided the only learning many thousands were ever to have. Politics and religion, which could lead the ignorant poor into rebellion and infidelity, were one source of the increasing interest in education, and John Locke was another. Locke's was the most powerful influence in eighteenth-century English philosophy, and his theories of education are responsible for some of the dullest passages in the eighteenth-century novel. Squire B., in a misguided moment, gives Pamela a copy of Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education, and after reading it, she writes her husband eight Interminable letters in which she goes through the treatise point by point (often quoting extensively) and sets forth at some length exactly why

she agrees or disagrees with the author (IV, 299-3 7 1). She even decides that she will turn author and "include in a little Book £her own^ humble Sentiments" on the subject. 150

She anticipates that the project may take "three or four Years" because she intends to include knowledge gleaned from observations of her own growing children (IV, 2 9 9). The sample we do have of Pamela on Locke does not whet the appetite for more, and one shudders to think of the bulk and boredom of the material that she could turn out with three or four years and infinite leisure at her disposal. Mrs. B. on the education of the young greatly enhances the tedium of Part II of the novel. Mrs. Collyer’s Felicia and her husband Lucius are equally interested in education. As Felicia tells her friend Charlotte, "Education, Madam, is a dally topic of discourse, a subject to us the most interesting? . . . Lucius is now so fond of it, that he talks of little else [this is true^; he is continually quoting to me the best authors on the subject" (II, 285). and among these best authors is John Locke. Locke is not only quoted, he is also footnoted in the novel. When, for instance, Felicia wishes to reinforce Lucius’ proclama­ tions on the innate benevolence of children, she includes in a note a long quotation from "the Judicious Mr. Locke" (I, 40-1). William Chaigneau in The History of Jack Connor is another author who dwells lengthily on education. His exemplars are Lord and Lady Truegood, the ideal parents, and Mr. Johnston, the ideal schoolmaster. Though Chaigneau does not refer specifically to Locke, his theories of educa­ tion are obviously taken from Locke’s treatise. Lord and 151

Lady Truegood are careful, for example, to prevent their children’s acquiring unreasonable fears. They send them into a dark room without a candle and never permit "a Servant to stay with them, or a Candle to burn in the Room, when they were put to Bed. No Nurse or Domestlok, durst venture to mention a single Word or idle Story that could inspire Fear into the Minds of the Children, except they chose their immediate Discharge” (I, 59). This is straight from Locke’s essay* paragraph 138 warns against the indiscretion of servants, whose usual method is to awe children, and keep them in subjection, by telling them of Raw-head and Bloody-bones. and such other names as carry with them the ideas of something terrible and hurtful, which they have reason to be afraid of when alone, especially in the dark.^ Chaigneau's schoolmaster, Mr. Johnston, follows Locke’s advice that children be "cozened" into learning rather than whipped into it (para. 249), and he invents games to make them believe that learning can be fun, as when he "placed [[his students^] in their Seats, and assigned them their different Parts" from the comedies of Steele, Farquhar or Cibber (I, 116). His young scholars are almost never subjected to physical punishment. Whenever he found a boy who was obstinate or sullen and despised learning, "he sent him home to his Friends" (I, 118). Other schoolmasters were less tender than the exemplary Mr. Johnston, and the novelists were not slow to criticize them. Every reader remembers the tutor Square whose cure for any of the world’s ills was to beat Tom Jones to a pulp. 152 Peregrine Pickle is subjected to a teacher who flogs him regularly twice a day, "and after having been subjected to this course of discipline for the space of eighteen months, [[Peregrine was[j declared the most obstinate, dull and untoward genius that ever had fallen under his cultivation} Instead of being reformed he seemed rather hardened and confirmed in his vicious Inclinations, and was dead to all sense of fear as well as shame11 (53). Edward Kimber also believes that cruelty to school children can have pernicious effects. He maintains that "sourness, ill-nature, and harshness drive [boys[j to the last extremities" and that "the more they are applied [sic] to by gentle methods, the better they behave" (19). His hero Joe Thompson is flogged so often that his

"breech was become perfectly hardened and callous" (1 3 )» and on one occasion when Joe is caught stealing pears, the sohool- master, he says, dragged me by the collar in the school-room, where binding me to his desk, I underwent a more severe flogging than ever was exercised upon a wretch at the cart’s tail. His passion was too violent to admit him to utter any expressions, and when he unbound me, whloh he did not till he was quite out of breath, he left me, . . , wallowing in the blood that plentifully flowed from me upon the floor. It was near two hours be­ fore I was able to stand, and then I crept up to bed in the utmost agony and torture <1*0 . And it is doubtful that Roderick Random’s moral nature or his penmanship was much improved when, says Roderick, his school­ master "caused a board to be made with five holes in it, through which he thrust the fingers and thumb of my right 153 hand, and fastened It by whipcord to my wrist, in such a manner as effectually debarred me the use of my pen" (I, 7-8).

ORPHANS AND FOUNDLINGS It is in their concern for the mistreated child, however — for the orphan, the foundling or the stepchild— that the first novelists display a tender-heartedness that can at times compare favorably with Dickens*. Distressing as was the plight of women in the eighteenth century, that of children was even worse. Children, physically weaker than grown women and less able to express their grievances, had not even the few alternatives for self-support available to the eighteenth-century woman. Obviously, a baby abandoned on the streets of London would die of starvation or exposure very quickly; it could not go into domestic service, take up needlework or become a prostitute. It could not even beg or steal as many older children could and did. Nor could it write a letter to Mrs, Haywood’s Female Spectator setting forth its complaints. Children are just about the most helpless creatures in the world. For a number of years their very existence depends entirely upon adult benevolence or sense of duty, but the grim details of the treatment of many eighteenth-oentury children testify to the lack of these qualities in a large portion of the Georgian populace. Fortunately, however, some people were benevolent, dutiful or both, and their efforts to relieve the miseries of the child’s lot constitute one of the century’s most admirable virtues. 15^

Among the more outspoken of these hume.nltarlans were the first English novelists. Unlike Wordsworth, they do not maintain that the child has some quality of innocence or goodness which the adult should strive to recapture; no novelist believes that it is better to be a child than an adult. But they do assert that to neglect or mistreat a helpless child is wrong. Usually, we meet the distressed child only in the early chapters of the novel, where we watch him mistreated by his parents or guardians, or left to try to make his own way in a world that is hard, indeed, on the weak and helpless. The author almost always devotes the major portion of his work to his adult protagonist, but many of the leading characters originate as destitute orphans or mistreated children. Foundlings and orphans, indeed, were so popular as heroes and heroines that Sir John Hill in a moment of irritation decided to "avoid the rock on which so many of his prede­ cessors [had] split" and not make his hero a foundling. Use­ ful as waifs and strays may be, he says, in "interesting the reader in the very earliest periods of the life of the future heroe of the story; nay, and of making even things preceding those, not only accessary [sic], but in some sort essential and necessary to the succeeding history; . . . it does not appear, that every writer of [novels] can be the g father of a foundling." The mistreated child assumes several roles in the eighteenth-century novel. Sometimes he is a foundling 155 (Tom Jones), sometimes an orphan (Charlotte Summers), and sometimes merely a poor waif whose parents are unable or unwilling to care for him (Jack Connor). These are the children whose lot could be improved by a change in the poor law or in the administration of the parish workhouses. At other times the child appears with parents or guardians who are perfectly capable of supporting him; he is in no danger of starving, but he is cruelly mistreated for various reasons, such as the jealousy of a stepmother or the avarice of an uncle who wants his fortune. In this case, a social attitude, not the law, needs changing. The situation of the lone child, be he foundling, orphan or the offspring of shiftless or Impoverished parents, was unenviable, as the novelists recognized. Fanny Hill's parents die just as she turns fourteen, leaving her "an unhappy friendless orphan" (31)t and Patty Saunders, when she discovers on the death of her mother that she is not the daughter of Farmer Saunders, laments that "instead of a Parentfs House to live in, I am only a Tenant, and subject at the Will of my Landlord, to be cast into Prison for my

Rent, and Board" (11). Tom Jones1 landlady, Mrs. Miller, tells him that after her husband's death, she would have perished without Allworthy's help and left "my poor little wretches, two destitute, helpless, friendless orphans, to the care or rather to the cruelty, of the world" (III, 111). "The world" in this case means the parish authorities and the workhouse— and any child subjected to their tender 156 mercies had, by the most optimistic estimate, a very slender chance of survival. The registers of fourteen London parishes between 1750 and 1755 show that only 168 out of 1 ,2^5 children 7 admitted to the workhouse were alive at the end of 1 755. Jonas Hanway, who was later to be active in the establishment of the Magdalen Hospital, began in the 1750*s to investigate the treatment of parish children. His examination of parish records and his publication of mortality statistics, giving the names of "every parish officer, whatever was his rank in life, under whose hands many Infants had died by neglect" made him extremely unpopular among churchwardens and beadles. Officials of St. George Middlesex, for instance, cannot have relished having the world know that of nineteen infants committed to their care in 1 7 6 5» sixteen died within a year. In that same year sixty-four out of seventy-eight children in the workhouse of the united parishes of St. Andrew and St. George, Holborn, perished, doubtless to the extreme embarrass­ ment of parochial officials when the fact was publicized. But as a result of Hanway*s efforts, Parliament in 1766 passed an act requiring that children belonging to all the parishes within the bills of mortality, rather than being raised in the workhouses, be sent out of London under the care of guardians, chosen expressly to care for them, until they were p at least six years old. The reasons for the high mortality rate are primarily two. In the first place, no baby or very young child can long survive exposure and hunger; many of those brought to 157 the workhouse must have been nearly dead before they were picked up from the street. In the six months preceding June 1759, 2,271 children were deserted on the streets and brought to the Foundling Hospital. Of these over half were less than eighteen days old, and 523 of them were under four days of age. Hanway estimated that the Foundling Hospital by caring properly for these children saved at least 800 lives o per year— lives that would have been lost in the workhouses.' The second reason for the high mortality rate was simply that parish officials were for economic reasons unenthusiastic about saving a child’s life. Every baby that lived had to be supported until he was old enough to be apprenticed, and then the parish had to pay the apprenticeship fee. The officials in their zeal to save the ratepayers’ money did not actually kill off their charges, but neither did they strive officious­ ly to keep them alive. Their attitude is perhaps best illustrated by the case of a workhouse overseer who refused to give an indigent mother as much money for the support of her child as a hired wet-nurse would receive. He Justified his refusal on the grounds that the mother would do everything possible to preserve her child and hence it would be a burden on the parish for years, whereas if the child were cared for by another it would die in a few weeks and cease to be an 10 expense to anyone. Should some child with an exceptionally hardy constitu­ tion manage to survive infancy in the workhouse, all he could 158 look forward to was treatment that, according to Hanway, 11 many "would deem cruelty to a dog or cat," In the London Workhouse In Bishopsgate, children worked from 7 a.m. until

6 p.m., with an hour off for "dinner and play." The workhouse of St. Leonard's Shoreditch was so overcrowded that thirty- nine children were sharing three beds in 1 7 7^. ’’by which means," said the authorities, "they contract disorders from 12 each other." In the Female Spectator, Eliza Haywood tells the story of Alithea who rescues an abandoned child, "a wretched cast­ away, either to perish, or surviving, survive but to miseries much worse than death.— The thought was shocking to me," says Alithea, "and I resolved to snatch him from the threatened woes, and provide for him out of my private purse, in such a manner as may not make his life hateful to him." Her husband reminds her of the doleful fact that "by the same rule your pity might be extended to hundreds, whom, doubtless, you may find exposed in the like manner" (I, 309). One of the virtues of Mrs. Haywood's Betsy Thoughtless is that she stands godmother to her laundress' baby and upon the mother's death takes upon herself the support of the child, which "being wholly destitute, was about to be thrown upon the parish." As a godmother, Betsy "thought herself bound by duty to preserve it from those hardships with which children thus exposed are sometimes treated" (118).

The novel which most scathingly denounces the treatment of parish children is The History of Charlotte Summers, the 159 Fortunate Parish Girl. The orphaned Charlotte Is seen playing in the fields by Lady Bountiful, who contemplates taking her from the parish nurse with whom she is boarded and providing her with a home. She discusses the matter with her physician, who tells her that her charity could not be put to better use because London children when they come upon the Parish, they are sta­ tioned upon some Parish-Nurse for a very small Allowance, who half starves them, allows them to saunter and idle away their Time, without mending either Manners or Morals, The half, or perhaps three Fourths of them die of down­ right bad Usage, and the Remainder learn so many lazy and vicious Habits, that they lead a few Years in the lowest Scenes of Vice and Wickedness, and then die either of Diseases and Rottenness, or by the Hand of public Justice. As this is manifestly the Case, a young Creature in the Hands of a London Parish is truly as much, nay more, an Object of Charity, than one starving for Want on a Dunghill (I, *17-^8). Bewildered, Lady Bountiful is unable to account for this state of affairs because she knows that enormous sums of money are collected from the poor rates to pay for the support of these children. It's true. Madam, reply*d the Doctor, the Poor's Rate in most Parishes in the City is very high; the Managers take a religious Care to collect it without Regard to Time or Circumstancess I assure you they give no Room to complain of them for Neglects of that Kind, But when they have got it into their Hands, the Poor, the indigent Poor have by much the smallest Share of it. It is spent in Riot, Excess and Extravagance, in guzzling, feasting and Tavern-Reckonings, while the Poor, to whom it belongs, are wretched be­ yond Description (I, ^9). The riot, excess, extravagance, guzzling, feasting and tavern- reckoning of which the doctor speaks so feelingly refer to the i6o

Infamous practice known as "saddling the spit," in which parish officials used funds meant to be expended on the children to give themselves a feast. Often this money came from impover­ ished parents who paid the parish a lump sum, in return for which the parish undertook to free the parents from all future claims for the child’s support. Fathers of illegitimate children were an especially good source of such income, be­ cause a lump sum payment of £ 1 0 was considered to be cheaper in the long run than the 2 s. 6d. per week required under an affiliation order. Since the child would very probably be dead within a year anyway, the parish officers saw no reason why they should not spend the money on themselves without waiting for the formality of actual demise, Hanway believed that "saddling the spit" was "but a small remove from innocent blood.He was right; such a practice cannot but remind one of Swift's Modest Proposal. The parish nurse to whom indigent children were farmed out was an unsavory character. In 1715 a committee of the House of Commons, appointed to Investigate the poor rates in

London, reported to the House That a great many parish Infants, and exposed Bastard Children, are inhumanly suffered to die by the Barbarity of Nurses, especially Parish Nurses, who are a sort of People void of Com­ miseration, or Religion hired by the Church­ wardens to take off a Burden from the Parish at the cheapest and easiest Rates they can; and these know the manner of doing it effec­ tively as by the Burial Books may evidently appear.1^ These creatures were, says Hanway, "indigent, filthy, or decrepit women," and being paid only a scanty wage, "they l6l are tempted to take part of the bread and milk Intended for the poor Infants. The child cries for food and the nurse beats it because it cries. Thus, with blows, starving, and putrid air, with the additions of lice, itch and filthiness, he soon receives his quietus." One nurse, Mary Poole, took such care of the children of St. Clement Danes parish that 1 K 18 out of 23 died within one month. The parish nurse evidently did not improve much in the next 52 years because in 1767 another House committee repeated the same condemna- tion as its predecessor in 1 7 1 5 . In the half-century interval between these two committee condemnations, however, there had arisen among the earliest English novelists, one champion of children who exposed the parish nurse for what she really was. I wish to refer at length to The History of Charlotte Summers because the anony­ mous author of this novel is one of the heroes of the move­ ment to improve the lot of children, and I think that he deserves more recognition than he has so far received. Some of his passages are not unworthy of Dickens. Lady Bountiful, determined to provide for the orphaned Charlotte, sends Margery, her maid, to fetch the child from the parish nurse with whom she is boarded. Returned from her mission, Margery relates her adventures. While inquiring for the nurse*s house, she met a neighbor with no very flattering remarks to make about parish nurses in general.

Why, says she, they [^parish nurses3 are all Devils; they get Money by murdering the in­ nocent Babies trusted to their Care, and 162

have no more Remorse when they have starved a fine Child to Death, or overlaid it, than if they had done a good Thing (I, 5*0. This parish nurse in particular, according to the loquacious neighbor, has several ways of using children as a source of income. One such way is to be paid twice for the care of one child. Why, first and foremost, she has never less than a Dozen or fourteen Children in her Care, dead or living? for every one of these she has two Shillings and Sixpence a week from the Parish? that's pretty well if they were even all alive, but they are perhaps half of them dead for a Twelvemonth before the Parish know any thing of the Matter? and then to mend the Matter, and keep up her Number, she takes in Children from other People, for whom she is paid the same Allowance? when their Parents come the Children are theirs, and when the Parish Officers come they are the Children of the Parish? so that she is always paid double for half the Children she has (I, 55). To augment this illegal income, the nurse commits one of the foulest crimes of which the eighteenth-century was guilty in regard to children. She rents them out "to Beggars about the Streets, who pay her Half a Crown a Week for the Use of the Child, which is always advanced before hand, so that she runs no Risque" (I, 55-56). These beggars often starved or mutilated the children in order to stir the public's compas­

sion. In 1763 the Gentleman's Magazine records that a woman was committed to the Gatehouse "for stealing a child, with which, for four months past, she has gone a-begging. She was first discovered by the mother in the Park with the poor infant at her breast almost starved, and it is thought

cannot live" (XXXIII, 5 6 3). Eight years later in 1771 a 163 certain Anne Martin was given two years in Newgate for "putting out the eyes of children, with whom she went a-begging about 17 the country," As if this weren't enough, the nurse in Charlotte Summers turns out also to be a remote ancestor of Fagin. Though she gets so much by the poor Babes, yet she starves them, and scarce allows them as much as can keep Soul and Body together; so that those that are grown up learn to filch and steal; they bring her what they get, and she gives them a good Meal for it, so that those who are the best Thieves are always the best fed; while those that cannot learn to be wicked have nothing but Blows and a hungry Belly, which obliges them, sooner or later, to learn the Trade she would have them; for whioh many of them have been brought to the Gallows (I, 5 6). These children were being encouraged in an activity for which they could be hangedi Ernest Caulfield notes in his history of The Infant Welfare Movement in the Eighteenth Century that"capital punishment knew no age," and cites the case of four chimney-sweepers' boys who were sentenced to death 18 for shop-lifting, Mrs. M, D, George tells of Mary Wotton, a child of nine, who was also sentenced to death for steal- 19 ing 27 guineas from her mistress, ^ Undeterred by this chronicle of wickedness, Lady Bountiful's faithful abigail carries on to the nurse's lair, where she is almost overwhelmed by the nursery and the nursery-assistant. The Room, with Leave of your ladyship, stunk like an House of Office, There were four Cradles in a most filthy dirty Condition, and two Children in each of them, mostly sick; so that it looked rather like a Lazar 164

House than any thing else. There was an ugly old Woman (God forgive me for calling any Body ugly) but she was really so. She was bent double, her Eyes red and scalded, her Jaws long, lank and dirty, her Nose and Chin met, for she had lost all her Teeth, and both were of enormous Length, so that with the Rags about her, she would have made a most shocking Scarecrow (I, 57-58). Not unnaturally, such a creature in such surroundings brutally mistreats the babies. "This Woman, Madam," says Margery "was feeding one of the Children with Water Gruel, which she crammed down the Throat of it with less Ceremony than I would cram a Capon, every now and then giving the poor Vision of an Infant a Pinch, or a Punch, when it squall'd through Pain of the brutish Usage" (I, 58). And Just as naturally, the babies die and are disposed of with a nonchalance that is awe-inspiring. The old Nurse-Tender, when she had stifled the Crying of the Child she had been feeding, went to another Cradle, and looking at one of the two Children which lay in it, said, without the smallest Mark of Concern or Surprize,— This little Thing is at last dead; I suppose it has kick’d off in one of its Pits; it's not above three Hours since I gave it some Pap.— It's well gone, reply'd the other, lay it up in that Box till Afternoon; I fancy the Overseer will be here soon, to take Orders about its Burial. . . . QThenl the old Beldame laid it out like a dead Cat, and in the dirty squalid Condition it was in, threw it naked into an old Deal Box, like any other Piece of Lumber, and went to feed the rest of the Infants in the same rugged brutish Manner I mentioned to you before (I, 59-60). The kind-hearted Margery is so unnerved by this incident that she cannot follow the nurse's words. Her mind, she tells Lady Bountiful, "was entirely taken up with the miserable 165 Objects about me, and the brutish Barbarity and Insensibility of the Brutes their Torturers. . . . I cannot help still being movedshe adds, "with the slight Manner in which they treated the Death of that sweet Lamb, who seemed about a Year old, and whose Death was certainly owing to their

Cruelty" (I, 6o-6l). Her sensibilities are further lacerated as she witnesses a baby-bargaining during her visit. A woman comes In with a child whom its father wishes the parish nurse to take off his hands for a lump sum payment of two guineas. The nurse holds out for three guineas because "this is a brave lusty hale Child, and may live many Years," and she shrewdly re­ minds the purveyor of babies that the parish officers would demand at least ten. Her opponent, however, is no novice at such deals and equally shrewdly remarks to her that the baby may be but a short Time on your Charge; I warrant, before the Month’s at an End, some of the Parish Children will die, and then you put this in the Place of one, and so are no more concerned about it: There­ fore, I think two Guineas is very fair for any Risque you run (I, 62). In an agony of apprehension for the poor child who is being haggled over like a leg of lamb, Margery offers to take it herself and care for it at no cost to its parents. Later, trying to Justify to her employer this additional member of the Bountiful household, she explains that "I no sooner set Eyes on it, than I conjectured it was condemned to this Slaughter-House, and felt all the Compassion for it its own 166

Mother could, feel, and the dear Innocent smiled upon me as It came In, and held out Its little Paw to me" (I, 61). Her rhetorlo makes as effective demands on the reader’s sympathy as It does on Lady Bountiful’s. The Infant phenomenon who could beat the statistical odds and survive babyhood in the workhouse or with the parish nurse still had to face his apprenticeship. The Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601 had declared that each parish was responsible for apprenticing its own poor, but as in the case of expendi­ tures for the workhouse, the parochial officials tried to lay out as little money as possible. The masters who took poor children as apprentices usually wanted only the woefully inadequate.fee paid with them, or they wished for cheap labor when trade was good, knowing full well that they would not be able to support these children in normal times. Sometimes masters were forced to take children whether they wanted them or not; those who refused were fined £10. Most children so foisted off on unwilling tradesmen were probably mistreated, and those whose masters had taken them for cheap labor or for the premium were not much better off because no one was interested in inquiring whether or not they were well treated. The Settlement Act of 1662 had provided that a child acquire a settlement in the parish where he served his appren­ ticeship, and most parish officials took advantage of this fact to apprentice their poor in some other locale. Once out of sight, the child was out of mind. In 1758 William Bailey said of the apprenticeship systems 167

The present method of putting out poor Children Apprentices is very well-known to be attended with great Inconveniences, as it lays an Encumbrance on Estates and Families. Few of those poor Children now serve out their time, and many of them are driven, by neglect and oruelty, into such immoralities as too frequently render them the Objects of Public Justice. Many of those who take Parish Apprentices are so inhuman, as to regard only the pecuniary consideration; and having once received that, they, by ill usage and undue severity, often drive the poor creatures from them; and so leave them in a more destitute Condition, and at riper age for Mischief, than they were in when first they became the care of Parish Officers. 20 Bailey does not exaggerate. Two of the most notorious crimes in the eighteenth century were committed by women against their apprentices. In 1762 Mrs. Metyard, a haberdasher, and her daughter were executed for having tortured a young apprentice girl to death. Later they also killed their victim’s sister, who, along with three other apprentices, had been forced to witness the crime. Five years later Mrs. Elizabeth Brownrigg was hanged for torturing to death her husband's apprentice, Mary Clifford. Mary and two other girls had been kept locked in an airless cellar where hogs were penned, and their food was one small piece of bread per day and whatever they could scavenge from the 21 hog trough. A Smollett reflects this state of affairs in Crab the surgeon for whom Roderick Random goes to work early in his career. Crab's eldest apprentice, he says, was "lately dead, not without violent suspicion of foul play from his master's brutality" (I, 38). In Jack Connor we are given 168

the ideal system of teaching the children of the poor a trade. Lord Truegood decides to "take and maintain" from the poor in his parish ten boys between the ages of seven and twelve "and have them taught some Trade or Business, that they might earn their Bread in an honest Way. His wife undertakes to provide similarly for ten little girls, and the author remarks that "The poor People press'd their Children on him with such Eagerness, that he might have had an Hundred" (I, 55-6). The evidence proves that most parishes fell far short of this ideal. Not only were the novelists critical of physical mis­ treatment; they also exposed the injustice of blaming the Innocent child for his poverty or for his parents' faults. The Gentleman's Magazine, in an article praising the Found­ ling Hospital, mentions especially the fact that the "objects of this charity are those alone who suffer by the faults, follies or indigence of others, and who consequently, have the strongest claim to the benevolence of mankind" (XVII, 164-). According to the novelists, this claim was not always granted. Charlotte Summers is brought to Lady Bountiful's house where she is admired and petted by the assembled company— until they realize that she is a parish girl. Lady Squeamish is horrified to discover that "we have been all this while caressing a little dirty Parish Brat. . , . But dear Lady Bountiful." she exclaims, "how could you let the odious Thing call you Mamma? . . . I would have nothing to say to such low Trash" (I, 71-72). She then takes her

i 169 highly Indignant leave, muttering “That it was strange People of her Bank should be entertained with every Beggar’s Brat an old Woman took a Fancy to11 (I, 71-73)• Lady Bountiful expres­ ses the author’s sentiments when she Informs her guests that Charlotte's beauty, innocence, good-nature and "her low helpless Situation . . . raised my Pity, and determined me to be a Mother to the helpless Orphan” (I, 72). The upper classes are not the only ones criticized in this novel for their lack of Christian charity toward the helpless. The author inserts a long digression which has nothing to do with the story of his heroine's life, but much to do with blaming children for their parents' iniquities. Farmer John Dobson, moved by sympathy for a sickly little child that a band of gypsies bring to his door, agrees to take it off their hands and try to nurse it back to health. When the ungrateful gypsies later rob Dobson, his wife takes her revenge on the baby. Throwing the child from her, she shouts, curse upon you . . . , its your unlucky Face has brought this Misfortune upon us, nothing can prosper that harbours any thing belong­ ing to so wicked a Crew; please God you shall go tomorrow to the Parish, for I'll never foster the Brat of one that has robbed and half murdered my Husband. This John Dobson is the Reward you wished yourself, for your Charity to this Spawn of Hell; but it was your own doings, my Mind told me at first that nothing good could come of it, but Mischief. Hold your Tongue your squalling Devil, or I will beat your Brains out, for the Child screamed out on being tossed on the Floor (I, 87-88). Farmer Dobson states the case for the child of wicked parents 170 when he “hastily snatched up the Child and hugged it to his Bosom; it's a Shame, says he, Moll, to see you act more brutishly than the Wretches who robbed me. How can you use the helpless Innocent so harshly on their Account?” (I, 88), Fielding's Captain Blifll is another character who believes firmly in the inheritance of sin. He is much given to quoting scripture to the effect that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children or that the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge, whence, says Fielding, “he argued the legality of punishing the crime of the parent on the bastard," though granting that “the law did not positively allow the destroying such base-born children," Allworthy replies to him that “however guilty the parents might be, the children were certainly innocent: , , . [and] to represent the Almighty as avenging the sins of the guilty on the innocent was

indecent, if not blasphemous" (I, 67-6 8). Mrs. Miller later reassures Tom Jones on this point, telling him that he need not be ashamed of his birth because "no good person will esteem you the less on that account." The words "dishonourable birth," she tells him, are nonsense, "unless the word 'dishonourable* be applied to the parents; for the children can derive no real dishonour from an act of which they are entirely innocent" (III, llA). Mrs. Deborah Wilkins, who has evidently not yet realized that the baby in Allworthy's bed is a boy, believes that "it is, perhaps, better for such creatures to die in a state of 171 innocence, than to grow up and imitate their mothers; for nothing better can be expected of them" (I, 25). This attitude was one with which little foundling girls had to cope, the theory being that they would grow up and follow in their mothers* footsteps, producing an endless line of illegitimate children to be a further drain on the rate-payers. Even the good-hearted Margery is at first averse to Lady Bountiful's taking in Charlotte Summers because "it's ten to one but that they [illegitimate girls] turn out like their Mothers"

(I. ^3).

THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL It is against this background of misery and mistreatment that we must view the chartering of the Foundling Hospital in 1739. 1 wish to discuss the Hospital in some detail because it is so inextricably, if indirectly, connected to the subject matter of many of the first English novels. Contemporary interest in it was extraordinary. The Hospital captured the imagination and sentiment of the people in a way that no other philanthropic venture did. From the day it opened its doors, the newspapers and magazines faithfully reported its transactions. Almost every issue of the Gentleman's Magazine between 17^0 and 175^ oontalns some notice of the Hospital— be it a meeting of the Board of Governors, the donation of money, the admission of a certain number of children, their baptism, their Inoculation for small-pox or a concert for their benefit. The orphans, waifs and strays who people

the early pages of so many novels of the 17 *K)'s and 5 0 *s 172 are a reflection of the Englishman’s interest in and excite­ ment about the Foundling Hospital. Without wishing to depreci­ ate the benevolent instincts of the novelists, I must point out that they were doubtless sometimes capitalizing on this interest and excitement— in the days of George II, foundlings sold almost as many novels as sex did, and mistreated children were very nearly as popular in fiction as mistreated women. This institution owes Its being almost entirely to the efforts of one man, Captain Thomas Coram. Coram belongs to that attractive group of eighteenth-century humanitarians, including Jonas Hanway, the Fielding brothers, Saunders Welch, John Howard, William Wilberforce, Hannah More and Mary Wollstonecraft, whose variously philanthropic lives and works stand out so clearly against the brutality of their age and who are largely responsible for the awakened public conscience that Justifies our calling the latter half of the century the Age of Benevolence. During the early part of the century, Coram's business required him to travel back and forth from his home to the city at all hours of the day and night. These trips through the London streets "afforded him frequent occasions of seeing young children exposed, sometimes alive, sometimes dead, and sometimes dying, which affected him extremely." He and a few kindred spirits set to work to arouse the public to the need of an orphanage to care for such children, and their efforts were finally rewarded by a Royal Charter granted on October 17, 1739. At the first meeting of the Governors of the Hospital, 173 Coram's address to the Duke of Bedford, the chairman of the Board, stated the case for eighteenth-century benevolent intentions: I can, my lord, sincerely aver, that nothing would have induced me to embark in a design so full of difficulties and discourage­ ments, but a zeal for the service of his Majesty, in preserving the lives of great numbers of his innocent subjects. The long and melancholy experience of this nation has too demonstrably shewn, with what barbarity tender infants have been exposed and destroyed, for want of proper means of preventing the disgrace. and sue-. oourl'ng the necessities of their parents." 22

From 17^1 until 1756 the hospital was supported entire­ ly by donations of a benevolent citizenry, and the public's response was gratifying, as most issues of the Gentleman's 23 and the London magazines testify, J One ingenious projector wrote to the Gentleman's, proposing that every Sunday the turnpikes throughout England charge double fees, the extra money going to the Foundling Hospital (XVII, 164-). From as far away as Calcutta there came a donation of 37»500 rupees left jointly to the Foundling and Magdalen hospitals by the will of one Omychund, "a black merchant," The arts also made their contribution to the Hospital, Since the charity was understandably reluctant to spend its limited funds on ornamentation, in 1756 a group of painters and sculptors, among them Hogarth, Rysbrach and Allan Ramsay, agreed to donate their works to decorate the new west wing, and the Hospital returned their generosity by permitting the public to view its paintings at any time, thus giving 17^ publicity to the artists. This popular exhibition "drew a daily crowd of spectators in their splendid equipage; and a visit to the Foundling became the most fashionable morning lounge in the Reign of George II. The &clat thus excited in favour of the Arts, suggested the annual exhibition of the united artists, which institution was the precursor of 2t> the Royal Academy." J Music and literature did their part just as painting and sculpture had. Handel presented an organ to the Hospital and every Easter season played a benefit performance of his Messiah which over the years netted 7t000 in donations. One of the more exotic literary gifts came from an unappreciated playwright named Shirley, a native of Stratford in Essex: The whole of my Dramatic Works, consisting of nine Tragedies, one Comedy, and five smaller productions [says Shirley's will], I bequeath to the Governors of the Foundling Hospital, in trust for that greatly useful Institution, hoping their being enabled to get them per­ formed, unaltered or mutilated, in one of the London theatres, they being certainly not inferior to any set of such performances produced at the present age. ° In 1761, the Reverend Laurence Sterne, whose Tristram Shandy was just beginning to be talked about, preached a sermon in the Hospital's chapel, and spoke movingly of the humanity of such an institution in its concern for the helpless. But it seems to me that the greatest literary contribution was made by the many novelists who wrote so graphically about the plight of the deserted child. Whether they were famous men like Henry Fielding or unknowns like the author 28 of Charlotte Summers. the publicity they gave to the found- 175 ling child, surely accounted for some of the contributions to the Hospital. The popularity of the Hospital and the pride which Englishmen took in it and its founder is shown by an exchange of opinion between the editor of the Country Oracle and a correspondent over the naming of the children. The first boy and girl who were baptized were called Thomas and Eunice Coram in honor of the founder and his wife (Gentleman's

Magazine. XI, 1 6 3). Thereafter names were chosen from among the notables of the aristocracy, the church, the military and the arts. The foundling Hospital at one time or another sheltered a Bedford, Montagu, Marlborough, Newcastle, Pembroke, Richmond, Vernon, Wlckliffe, Latimer, Laud, Tillotson, Philip Sidney, Francis Drake, Oliver Cromwell, John Hampden, Admiral Benbow, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Vandyke, Michael Angelo, William and Jane Hogarth, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Charles Allworthy, Tom Jones, Sophia Western and Clarissa Harlowe. After a visit by Admiral Nelson in 1801, three children were christened Baltic Nelson, William Hamilton 2Q and Emma Hamilton. A correspondent in the Country Oracle questioned whether it was not disrespectful to name foundlings for the departed great. The editor replied that Thomas Coram had specifically requested that the first children be named for himself and his wife, and what was good enough for Thomas Coram "can never be intended, or interpreted, as a Disgrace or Indignity to the Dead."^® The most obvious case of an author's taking advantage 176

of the topicality of this popular charity is the anonymous Adventures of a Kidnapped Orphan. ^ Misled by the title, the reader expects a detailed story of a child similar to that which Fielding gives us In brief outline In Joseph Andrews. Joseph*s beloved Fanny Price was, as a baby, stolen by gypsies from her parents Gammar and Gaffar Andrews and eventually sold by them to Sir Thomas Booby. Fielding glosses over the minutiae of Fanny’s life with the gypsies because he is only using the incident to add one last gratuitous complication to Joseph and Fanny’s love story and, I presume, to drag into his novel the incest motif of which he is so inexplicably fond. In any event, this is what one expects from the title, The Adventures of a Kidnapped Orphan. Expects in vain, because Page, the orphan In question, turns out to be a young man old enough to enter the university, who is ’'kidnapped" by a press gang and sent to serve with the army in India. The author’s rhetoric, as well as his title, reinforces my belief that he is hopping on a bandwagon. He will, he says, be amply compensated for his pains if his book "tends to the detection of one villain, or the preservation of one innocent" (iv). And Page himself comments on the irony that Britain, with her boasted freedom, would "suffer children to be torn from the arms of parents" (111). Such language is common in the novels which seek to raise our sympathy for the mistreated child, but it refers to pre-adolescents, not to draft-age young men. Obviously, this author knows a popular subject when he sees one— and knows how to take advantage of it. 177 The novelists and the Foundling Hospital, then seem to have arrived at a tacit reciprocal agreement. Authors publi­ cized the plight of the foundling and, hence, increased the awareness of the need for the Hospital; in return, the Hospital provided the novelist with a best-selling subject. Probably the most sincere compliment the Hospital ever received came from the many novelists whose works testify Indirectly to its popularity. The Hospital also received a more direct, if slightly facetious, tribute from the anonymous author of The Adventures of Captain Greenland, who has not one orphan in his entire two volumes. The hero, Silvius Greenland, and his friend Bob Wilful are enroute by stage coach to London, and among their fellow passengers are a Hawser Trunnion-type naval captain and a parson, who is to be the new chaplain at the Foundling Hospital, The Captain is main­ ly Impressed with the Hospital as a source of manpower for the country's military forces. Damn my Heart, [said] the Captain, but I know old Coram, very well, that projected it, and it is the best Thing that ever was invented since the beginning of the world; for, damn my Heart this War has swallowed up a great many good Fellows; and this same Hospital is some Encouragement for poor People, that can't well maintain a Parcel of Brats, to be nevertheless endeavouring to make good this Deficiency; and it must be from the poor working People, that the King must expect his best and ablest Soldiers for the next War (II, 153). Silvius* friend Bob Wilful, with tongue in cheek; agreesi Then let us join, I say, in our most grateful and hearty Thanks to the worthy Authors, 178

Pounders, and Subscribers to that laudable and charitable undertaking, for the Increase and Support of his Majesty’s good Subjects, the Foundling-Hospital: which is, indeed, as you say, Sir, a most noble Encouragement for all able and willing Men and Maids not to waste their Time and Vigour in Idleness and Neglect (II, 155). Another author— this one from the twentieth century— also implied a facetious compliment to Captain Coram and his Hospital, When Bernard Shaw’s Andrew Undershaft needs a foundling to carry on the tradition which requires that only foundlings can inherit his cannon factory, he cannot find one. The distraught munitions-maker complains to his wife, Lady Britomart: Every blessed foundling nowadays is snapped up in his infancy by Barnardo homes, or School Board officers, or Boards of Guardians; and if he shews the least ability he is fastened on by schoolmasters; trained to win scholar­ ships like a race horse; crammed with second­ hand ideas; drilled and disciplined in docility and what they call good taste; and lamed for life. The dearth of foundlings which so distresses Mr, Undershaft

in 1907 Is due ultimately to a movement which began with Captain Coram's hospital in 17^1. The loud chorus of approval for the Hospital that sounds from contemporary sources was not without its antlphonal voices. Laudable and necessary as this institution may have been, it was very occasionally opposed by those who saw it as an encouragement to vice. In April 17^1» the Gentleman’s Magazine reprinted an article from the Country Oracle in which a correspondent asks whether indiscriminate admission of

% 179 Infants to the Hospital "without the least Enquiry from whom or whence they are brought" gives encouragement to vice by offering sinful parents a way of concealing the fruits of their sin. The editor replies, quite sensibly, that It does, Indeed, but however heinous a crime fornication may be, murder Is even more terrible, and the hospital, at least, offers an alternative to this equally effective way of concealing guilt (XI, 197). Bridget Allworthy, who Is doing everything she can to discourage speculation that she may be Tom Jones * mother, expresses these hostile sentiments when she objects to her brother's tenderness for the foundling. For her part, she remarks, "she could not help thinking it was an encourage­ ment to vice; but that she knew too much of the obstinacy of mankind to oppose any of their ridiculous humours" (I, 31). To the credit of the Georgians, Bridget Allworthy and the Country Oracle's correspondent are a very small minority.

THE STEPCHILD AND THE MISTREATED CHILD The law and the efforts of humanitarians could do some­ thing to alleviate the misery of the foundling, the orphan and the child of the poor, but children mistreated by their own parents are a different case; here we are concerned with effecting a change in human nature. Dr. Johnson thought the problem serious enough in 1751 to deplore in Rambler No. 1^8 "the cruelties often exercised In private families, under the venerable sanction of parental authority." He devotes this entire essay to a plea for the helpless child and a

criticism of parental tyranny. 180

To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands [he says^), and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence,'without any powers to alarm Jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affec­ tion, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind. . . . He that can hear to give continual pain to those who surround him, and can walk with satisfaction in the gloom of his own presence; he that can see submissive misery without relenting, and meet without emotion the eye that implores mercy, or demands Justice, will scarcely be amended by remonstrance or admonition .... On one occasion, at least, "remonstrance and admonition1* did have some effect. Letitia Pilkington, separated from her husband and Just managing to keep herself alive, learns that the misbegotten Matthew has sold their *»two younger children for slaves to New York," a cruelty she can scarcely credit, "for [she says^j, even admitting what he had so cruelly charged me with in regard to his bed with truth, how had their helpless innocence offended him?** She writes *'to the rulers and Bishops'* in Dublin, who investigate the affair, put pressure on Matthew and force him "to refund to the master of the Kid-Ship the golden earnest he had received as the price of the innocent." Later, when her son comes to Join her in London, he tells her of Matthew's brutality. He stripped off my clothes, though in the depth of winter, and locked them up, leaving me with­ out any covering but my shirt in the dark back- kitchen, which as you may remember, was in the winter overflowed with water, charging the servants not to give me a morsel of food. Whenever Matthew left the house, the servants would let the 33 boy into the kitchen by the fire and feed him. One is tempted to include Letitia Pilkington's story in the discus­ sion of the fictional treatment of parental tyranny because 181 Matthew's actions seem almost unbelievable, but so far as I can discover, no one either then or later has questioned the truth of this incident, though her reliability in other respects has been challenged. Unnatural parents are many in the fiction of the 17*K)'s and 50's. Charlotte Summers' rakish father comes home just long enough to sell his wife's furniture and kick his daughter. He "spurned the dear Infant from him as he would a Snake," even though "all this while [she was]] fawning upon him, and begging him to give her a Kiss" (I, 210). The Old Man of the Hill tells Tom Jones that his mother hated the sight of him "and made home so disagreeable to me, that what is called by school-boys Black Monday, was to me the whitest in the whole year" (I, 115). Little Jackey in Chetwood's The Unnatural Uncle; or. Repentant Villains survives three attempts by his wicked guardian to dispose of him. The guardian is the child's uncle and next heir to Jackey»s father's fortune. Chetwood's rhetoric is often crude and his attempt to influence the reader's emotional response is obvious, but I, for one, do not object. A mistreated child seems to me to cry out for the full powers of anybody's rhetoric. Jackey*s uncle first sells him to a band of gypsiess They went to the Chamber where the sweet Innocent lay fast asleep; and, naked as he was, carry»d him to the Barn, and then the whole Troop decamp'd immediately. The Uncle had the wicked Joy to see him put on the Ass, still asleep, before the chief Gypsle, wrapp'd in a Blanket, with the least Remorse, wishing 182

in his Heart that he might never see him more. This plot foiled, the wicked uncle then pushes Jackey into a whirlpool, but he is rescued by a man fishing for cray­ fish. Finally, he merely hires a man to take the boy away and kill him. This man gets as far as "Tewksberry" "with the pretty innocent Jackey, where he sold his Horse, and took Boat for Gloucester City. He had several times intended to murder him in some obscure Place; but his innocent Prattle, and harmless Looks prevented him" (88). Another mistreated Chetwood child hero is Billy in The Stepmother. ^ Billy's father has, after his wife’s death, married his servant maid, by whom he already had an illegitimate son Robert. Robert is spoiled by every indulgence, while the patient Billy is humiliated in every possible way, made to eat with the servants, and often punished for Robert’s misdeeds. Any reader today who merely sees the cast of characters for this story can predict the outcomes Billy, an 11-year-old boy whose mother has Just died. His father. His father's second wife, formerly a serving- maid. Robert, illegitimate son of Billy’s father and step-mother. We know immediately that the stepmother, Jealous because her illegitimate child cannot inherit, will make Billy's life miserable, prompt her husband to abuse the boy, and eventual­ ly drive him from his rightful home. It is the old story of Cinderella and the wicked stepsisters, but Chetwood was the 183 first to adapt it to the requirements of the English realistic novel. Poor Billy is almost distracted by ill-usage, but "he had no Person to complain to, the Servants that pity’d him durst not speak, for fear of their wicked Mistress,” and when Robert kills a brood of young chickens, Billy "was severely horsewhipt for it, by his Father, This Usage almost broke his Heart: when he opened his Mouth to excuse himself the Step-mother would stop it”— usually with a torrent of abuse and a box on the ear (4-8-9). Eliza Haywood took up the problem of the stepmother in l?4-5. The Female Spectator contains a letter from "Philenia” criticizing the cruelty of these women to their husbands' children and remarking that such cruelty "is so common a thing, that we shall scarce find one, whose father has made a second venture, without having reason for complaint of the sad alteration of their fate" (III, 168). A son, according to "Philenia," is the least liable to mistreatment "because the manner of his education renders him less at home, and consequently not so much exposed to the insults of a barbarous step-mother," but even he suffers "by the sly insinuations and misrepresentations she makes of his most innocent actions," A stepdaughter's plight is worse than her brother's because she is "continually under the cry of a person, invested with full power over her, resolved to approve of nothing she does, QwhoJ takes delight in finding

fault ..." (Ill, 1 6 9). The most hapless victims of all, 18^ however, are babies, as “Philenia" maintains in a postscript. Ladies, the hardships I have mention'd are still more cruel, when exercised on infants, who are incapable of making any sort of defence for themselves; and that stepmother who makes an ill use of her power over such helpless inno­ cence, ought, methlnks, to be obnoxious to the world, and shunn'd like a serpent, by all those of her own sex, who are of a different disposi­ tion (III, 17*0. Mrs. Spectator adds her condemnation to that of "Philenia," agrees with her that abusive stepmothers are all too common and makes a moving plea for mercy toward helpless infants. It is Impossible to converse, or indeed to live at all in the world, without being sensible of the truth Philenia has advanced; and every one must own, with her, that there cannot be a more melancholy circumstance, than what she so pathetically describes.— Every tongue is full of the barbarity of stepmothers; not [sic] is there any act of cruelty more universally condemned by the world, or which doubtless is more detestable, in the sight of Heaven, than that we sometimes see practiced on children, by those women whose duty it is to nurture and protect them. . . . [T]here is not any crime, not excepting those which incur the heaviest penalty of the law, can render the guilty person more hateful both to God and man, especially when committed on helpless infance [sic]]: . . . for those little dear Innocents, whose smiles would turn even fury Itself into mildness, who can only testify their wants by their cries; when they, I say, are injured, . . . what words can paint out the enormity of the fact! (Ill, m - 1 7 9 ) . On one occasion, the stepmother of Chetwood's Billy snatches a book from his hands and gives him "such a Blow on the Forehead with it, that cut the Flesh, and his Face was covered with Blood." The author Intrudes here to give his own opinion. "Inhuman Wretch [he exclaims], to treat 185 a poor Innocent In such a Mannerj . . . A Woman sure could never have any Regard for the Father, who could use his child In such an Inhuman MannerJ My heart aches to think of it” (56). Later in the story, Billy runs away from home and takes refuge in an ale house where a poor old woman befriends him. "What a Difference, he laments, there Is between this poor Woman and my barbarous Step-Mother.’ She that never saw me before takes Pity on m.v Misfortunes, while my Mother-in-law, that ought to have guarded me from them, has brought them upon me11 (58). The reader could scarcely miss the point. Other novelists also dealt in one way or another with stepmothers. In The History of Honorla, the beautiful young Stella is forced to enter a convent by "the Cruelty of a Jealous Step-Mother" (25), and one of the virtues of Pamela and of Mrs. Collyer's Felicia is that they both make kind and affectionate stepmothers to their husband’s illegitimate

children. An Interesting development is to be noted In these stories of children mistreated by their parents, step-parents or guardians. Help often comes from the servants. We have already seen Lady Bountiful*s Margery in Charlotte Summers rescue a baby boy from the parish nurse. When Jack Connor, abandoned by his mother, creeps into Lord Truegood’s dog kennel for shelter, he is found next morning by his Lord­ ship’s groom. The Servant was good natur’d, and taking him into one of the Stables, gave him a Piece of Bread and some small Beer. He wash’d his 186

little Feet with warm Brandy and Water, which was ready to "be given to a sick Horse, and laid him on some clean Straw (I, 31-32). After Chetwood’s inhuman uncle sells him to the gypsies, Jackey Is rescued by the uncle's servants Sam and Sarah, who see him with the band when they stop to have their fortunes told. And following the uncle's attempt to drown Jackey, Sam becomes suspicious. He "loved the Child as If it had been his own; and that Love made him watch every Motion of the Uncle, tho' unobserved by him" (86). Eventual­ ly, the uncle is forced to discharge Sam and Sarah before he can dispose of Jackey. He then orders his new servant to take the boy away and kill him, but this man finds that "the longer he was with [Jackey], the more he relented, and at last he quite abhorred his cruel Purpose." He contemplates carrying the child back to his uncle, but he "did not in the least doubt but he would find some Instrument of Villainy barbarous enough to undertake his Death, and not have a relenting Soul like his." This hired killer becomes so fond of his victim that he marries his lodging-house keeper in order to have a home in which to raise the child (88-9). When Robert in The Stepmother kills a turkey-cock and blames it on Billy, a servant maid defends Billy and gets into a fistfight with the stepmother. Being "a lusty Wench," says Chetwood, she "got her Mistress down [and], pummelled her heartily, till her Ladyship's Nose gushed out with Blood." Alarmed by her mistress’ cries for help, the Scullion "ran with a Bowl of greasy Dish-water, and threw it all over her 187 Mistress to recover her; but our History does not inform us whether she knew it to be Dish-water or not." The implica­ tion is that she very definitely did know. Billy runs away from this imbroglio and his father orders the butler to catch him and beat him, "but he flatly refused, declaring that Master Bobby ought to be whipped, for it was he that killed the Turky." Naturally, the domestic staff is dismissed en masse after this incident (^9-52). These kind- hearted servants are the first indications of the increasing­ ly sympathetic treatment which the realistic novel will accord to the poor and their problems. 36

THE RHETORIC OF PATHOS The novelists often describe in highly pathetic terms the physical or mental anguish of the lone child, and their rhetoric is obviously designed to guide the reader’s emotional response to the sufferings of helpless innocence. For sheer pathos, nothing in the eighteenth-century novel can surpass Farmer Dobson’s description of the mistreated child in Charlotte Summers; . . . you could not but observe [he tells his wife! with how little Tenderness, the Wretch its Mother treated the helpless Thing, a Bear would be Infinitely more tender of its Cubs; the poor Thing must have pined and died in the utmost Misery, purely for want of proper Care, or perhaps they might have thrown it behind some Hedge, and left it to perish and become the Prey of the Fowls of the Air, or some other ravenous Creature .... [A]nd if it had lived, what must it have been? a Vagaband [sic], a Thief, a Prostitute without the Knowledge of any Thing that’s good, . . . is it not a Deed of Charity to preserve the 188

harmless Innocent from such dreadful Calamity? (I, 84). Sometimes it is the child's physical sufferings that we must sympathize with. Chetwood's Billy in The Stepmother leaves his unhappy home and on the first day walks "twenty Miles, with a broken Heart; . . . with his tender Feet full of Blisters, without taking the least Sustenance." He stops at an ale-house where the "poor fatigued Youth desired to go to Rest, but when he went to pull off his Stockings, his tender Feet were so blistered and galled, that he could not get them off without terrible Pain," and the next morning "his Feet were so bad, that he was not able to walk" (56-57). At other times our sympathy is demanded for mental anguish. In The History of Cornelia, the hero Bernardo follows a group of bailiffs "into a room in which were five children almost frighted out of their senses." The eldest, a girl of fifteen, was Just "recovering out of a fit." She tear­ fully tells Bernardo that their mother has died and that the creditors have arrived to take all their possessions. "Little used to such scenes," she says, "my terror was inexpressible, and was much increased by the distress my poor little brothers and sisters were in. Some ran for shelter into the next room, to my poor mother's body, others hung on me, equally incapable of assisting them. I thought, before this incident, I could not have been more miserable; but now I found myself absolute­ ly distracted" (232). The frightened little brothers and sisters and, especially, the dead mother's body in the next 189 room are obvious bids for the reader's commiseration. So too, with Jack Connor. Left at Lord Truegood's gate, the "poor Child waited a long Time . . . with great Patience, till Hunger and Night coming on, he cry'd till his little Heart was almost broke. . . . He went into a large Court-yard, and finding a House, which was a deserted Dog-kennel, he boldly enter'd; and what with his Fatigues, and little Sorrows, he lay down and slept soundly 'till next Morning" (I, 31). Here we are moved by the mental state of the little hungry boy, tired, with his heart almost broken, sleeping in a dog kennel. Charlotte Summers' mental unhappiness is especially mov­ ing because she is aware of her plight and can remember hap­ pier days. When Lady Bountiful speaks kindly to her, Charlotte breaks into sobs. Tears had given Vent to the Fullness of her little Heart, and she could say with inter­ rupting Sobs, Pardon me. Madam, you are so like my dear Mamma that's dead, who would not have allowed me to go to the Parish if she had been alive, that I could not help crying when I saw you, and heard you speak so kindly to me, and ask to what Parish I belong'd (I, 3 9). Lady Bountiful and Margery "endeavoured to encourage the weep­ ing Orphan to dry up her Tears" (I, *4-0), and later Charlotte "sobb'd as if she would have broke her little Heart" (I, *H). When Lady Bountiful takes her home with her, Charlotte "fell on her Knees, the Tears trickling down her little Cheeks, and grasping one of the Lady's Hands she kissed it eagerly, and said, Madam, I'm too young to tell you properly how much I 190 love you for your Goodness In taking Care of me, but indeed, and indeed, I just now feel myself as if I saw my dear Mamma, and would call you so if I thought it would not displease you” (I, 70). Tom Jones is an unlikely novel to vie with Charlotte Summers for pathos, but Fielding has one childish near-death- bed scene that in pathos, if not in length can bear comparison with those of Paul Dombey and Little Nell. The entire family of Mrs. Miller's relative, Anderson the highwayman, is dying of hunger, and one child is also very ill. The landlady tells Tom, "I protest I was never more affected in my life than when I heard the little wretch, who is hardly yet seven years old, while his mother was wetting him with her tears, beg her to be comforted. 'Indeed, mamma,* cried the child, 'I shan't die; God Almighty, I'm sure, won't take Tommy away; let heaven be ever so fine a place, I had rather stay here and starve with

you and my papa than go to it'" (III, 6 9). The eighteenth century, then, was often brutal to children, but as it became increasingly conscience-stricken, successful efforts were made to alleviate their suffering. The early novelists in their depiction of the child's lot must have contributed something to this awakened consciousness of these helpless victims, just as they contributed to the awareness of the plight of those other victims of their

often brutal age, women and prisoners. 191 NOTES

1 M. G. Jones, The Charity School Movement: A Study of Eighteenth Century Puritanism In Action (Reprinted Hamden, Conn., 1964), p. k.

2Bayne-Powell, The English Child In the Eighteenth Century, p. 6 3.

-^Jones, The Charity School Movement, pp. ^-5.

Richard D. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800-1900 Tchicago, 1957), p. 3^-

^Mrs. Collyer's Lucius at one point discharges a servant girl who has frightened his daughter "with threats of Tom Dark and other words, which to children are of dire­ ful sound" (Felicia to Charlotte. II, 2 8 0).

^Sir John Hill, The Adventures of Mr. Lovelll, Interspers'd with Many Real Amours of the Modern Polite World, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (London, 1750), I, 3.

^Hutchins, Jonas Hanway, pp. 57-58• 8 John Pugh, Remarkable Occurrences in the Life of Jonas Hanway, Esq. Comprehending an Abstract of Such Parts 6f his Travels in Russia, and Persia, as Are the Most Interesting; A Short History of the Rise and Progress of the Charitable and Political Institutions Founded or Supported by Him; Several Anecdotes, and an Attempt to Delineate His Character (London. 1787). p p . 187-190. Q 7Hutchins, Jonas Hanway, pp. 33-3^.

l0 Pugh, Life of Hanway, p. 192.

1 1 xxHutchins, Jonas Hanway. p. ^7*

1 2 M. D. George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1951)» P* 2lT> 192

1 -^George, London Life In the Eighteenth Century, pp. 216-217.

■^House of Commons Journal, XVIII (March 8, 1715). p. 396. Quoted in Marshall, The English Poor In the Eighteenth Century, p. 99*

■^Hutchins, Jonas Han way, pp. 64 and 6 6. See also Marshall, The English Poor inthe Eighteenth Century, p. 9 8, for a discussion of the parish nurse.

^Marshall, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century, p. 1 0 0 .

^Ernest Caulfield, The Infant Welfare Movement in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1939), P* ^6.

•^Caulfield, The Infant Welfare Movement, p. 46.

^ G e o r g e , London Life in the Eighteenth Century, p. 282.

20 Marshall, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 182-204.

21 0*Malley, Women in Sub .lection, pp. 88-8 9. For the gruesome details of the Brovrnrigg case see the Gentleman's Magazine, XXXVII (1 7 6 7). PP- 4l9ff.

22John Brownlow, The History and Objects of the Foundling Hospital, with a Memoir of the Founder. 3rd ed. (London, 1 8 6 5), pp. n 4 and ll8.

2^Brownlow, pp. 48ff. Beginning on June 2, 1756, the Hospital was supported for three years and ten months by government subsidy. It then returned to private support.

24 Brownlow, p. 50.

p c; ^Brownlow, pp. 56-64. 193

Brownlow, pp. 51 and 76-77. Mrs. Delany was a faith­ ful attendant at the concerts whenever she happened to he in London at Easter, and her letters to her sister show her interest in the affair. See, for instance, Delany, Autobiography. II, 5 5 6.

^Brownlow, p. 29. ?8 The Cambridge Eibliography of English Literature, II, 5^. states that some scholars have credited Sarah Fielding with the authorship of Charlotte Summers. Frederic Blanchard in Fielding the Novelist: A Study in Historical Criticism (New Haven. 1927). P. 54, notes that others have presumed Miss Fielding's brother, Henry, to be the author. Neither the Cambridge Bibliography nor Blanchard accepts the authorship of either Fielding— and rightly so, I believe. The novel contains too much facetious fooling for the normally very sentimental Miss Fielding. Henry Fielding is perfectly capable of the facetious fooling, but the humor is much too forced to accord with his usual effortless style.

2^Brownlow, pp. 42-*j4.

-^Reprinted in the Gentleman's Magazine. XI (17^1). 97. Ernest Caulfield maintains that "the Foundling Hospital took London by Storm. Relatively speaking, no charitable institution ever received such wholehearted response from the populace. The array of London's titled nobility and gentry was more becoming a coronation than an institution devoted to welfare of infants. And the interest of the middle classes was no less zealous. . . . The fashion to contribute to the support of the hospital continued unabated and the popular prejudice against Coram's early efforts diminished to the vanishing point" (The Infant Welfare Movement, pp. 78-79)*

^ The Adventures of a Kidnapped Orphan (London, 17^7).

32Johnson, Complete Works, III, 223-227-

-^Pilkington, Memoirs, pp. 233-23^ and 290. 19^

-^William Hufus Chetwood, "The Unnatural Uncle; or, Repentant Villain" in Six Historical Relations (Dublin, 1755), P. 77-

•^William Rufus Chetwood, "The Step-Mother: or, Good Luck at Last" in Six Historical Relations (Dublin, 1755) .

J An interesting subject for further study would be the treatment of the lower classes in the first English novels. The novelists often show themselves to have acutely active social consciences in their depiction of these people. CHAPTER IV

PRISONERS

Although the early English novelists* concern with women and children is discernible merely from looking at the titles of their Works, one must be familiar with their plots in order to be aware of the interest they display in prison conditions. Among the protagonists who go to prison are Tom Jones, Jonathan Wild, Billy Booth, Clarissa, Pere­ grine Pickle, Roderick Random, Joe Thompson and Charlotte Summers. Minor characters who share this fate are Wilson in Joseph Andrews. Miss Williams and Mr. Melopoyn, the poet, in Roderick Random, Miss Forward in Betsy Thoughtless and Heart- free in Jonathan Wild. In all these works, by simply re­ flecting actual conditions in mid-century prisons, the authors increase their readers’ consciousness of the need for reform, and they often intrude in propria persona or through a reliable narrator to state that conditions should be changed. They particularly express indignation at the discrepancy between crime and punishment, the folly of imprisoning a debtor (thus removing any opportunity for him to pay his debts), the deplorable physical conditions within the prisons and the brutal treatment of the prisoners by inhuman jailers. 195 196

John Howard Is traditionally credited with initiating the movement to reform the English prison system with the publication of his State of the Prisons (1777ff). G. M. Trevelyan follows this tradition when he says that it was not until the last decades of the century that "the Human­ itarian movement under Howard and others . . . set about its task so long overdue," and D. L. Howard in his recent history, ThB English Prisons, remarks that there were few indications of "lively interest in the sufferings of criminal offenders in the years before 1773 when John Howard began his work."1 Such statements do not accurately reflect the situation in the early and middle years of the eighteenth century. Parliament, for Instance, had for some years shown an active concern with prison conditions and had intervened a number of times in prison administration by passing laws and making investigations. In 1700 and again in 1711 laws were passed in Parliament allowing the Justices to levy taxes for the repair of prisons. In 1729 both houses of Parliament, at the urging of James Oglethorpe, conducted investigations into the management of the London prisons, A few keepers were prosecuted as a result of the shocking conditions revealed by the investigators, but no convictions were obtained, partly for political reasons. During the 1730's William Hay introduced in Parliament a series of bills for erecting new local prisons to replace the unhealthy, over­ crowded structures then in use. (Many prisons were so. 197 easily escaped from that the Inmates had to be kept in irons.)

In 17*j4 a law was passed ordering Justices to visit and report on the management of county Houses of Correction. In 175^ another House committee Investigated the running of the King's Bench prison and reported the same abuses as the Committee of 1729. Seventeen fifty-nine saw the enactment of three laws designed to fix the scale of fees charged to debtors and requiring that creditors pay 4d. per day to support any debtor they oaused to be imprisoned. The problem was that the prisoner benefited very little from this legislative activity, simply because there was no administrative machinery to implement it. As Beatrice and Sidney Webb point out, Parliament might pass a law, but it was nobody's business even to communicate the fact to such local authorities as existed. It was no part of the duty of the Secretary of State, nominal­ ly charged with Home Affairs, to know what the looal authorities were doing. He received from them no annual or other reports. He had no inspectors to find out what was happening. He regarded it as beyond his function even to remonstrate with any local authority in the execution of its duty, let alone intervene authoritatively to get the laws carried out. Moreover, he had, almost invariably, no legal power to order the looal authorities to do, or to abstain from doing, anything.2 As far as prison reform is concerned, Englishmen during the reign of the first two Georges intended to do good, but were not sure exactly how to do it. They did make a begin­ ning, however. John Howard needed an active public conscience that would be outraged by his reports on prison conditions In the 1770's— otherwise, I presume, these reports would have 198 met the same fate as those of the Select Committees of 1729 and

175^'» we would regard them only as well-meant but abortive early attempts at improvement. The growth of that social conscience is indicated from other sources besides the

legislature. Prison conditions were a conspicuous example of social injustice which people in the eighteenth century attempted to relieve by outright charity, as well as by reform, and these efforts serve as an indication of the humanitarian instincts of the age. By merely reading the periodicals of the time, one realizes that many Englishmen had a compassionate concern for imprisoned debtors, for instance,, and that private individuals were doing their bit to alleviate the sufferings of these unfortunates. Nearly every issue of the Gentleman^ Magazine between 17*K) and 175^ records the attempt of some benefactor to relieve imprisoned debtors, as did Mr. Andrews of Oxford who in 17^2 left an annuity to discharge forty-six debtors from 3 the Marshalsea (XII, l6l). The papers of the philanthropist Thomas Guy show that he also helped debtors: paid £1-16-8 for Win. Smith a poor weaver who had been in prison for a long time for debt £1-^-8 for Jane Middleton Widow and Children, very poore and a prisonnier 20 weeks Bartholomew Nevill, a poor industrious man, one arme, sells oringis in a barojj* about our streets, a prisonler fo.r 12 munse At their anniversary dinner meetings the members of the

SPCK took up collections for releasing poor debtors.-* The 199 popularity of this charitable exercise is revealed by the Earl of Egmont, who believed that the politician who wanted the people on his side would be wise to court their favor by helping the Imprisoned. George II, like every other Hanoverian monarch, did not get on well with his heir. Returning to England in January 1737i he was hissed in the streets by the people; that same day the Prinoe, in order to emphasize the difference between himself and his father

and to enhance his own popularity, gave £ 5 0 0 for the relief of prisoners who were freemen of London. "His Royal High­

ness, 11 remarks Egmont, "has wise heads about him. In a different way from those who gave money for the relief of debtors, the Wesleyans were also taking an interest in the imprisoned. It is irritating to read Wesley*s journal because one has such a great sense of opportunity wasted. He continually notes that he visited the condemned in Newgate or the debtors in the Marshalsea, but all he ever seems to have done was to preach at these people or pray over them. As one historian says, "It is . . . to be regretted that neither [[Wesley], nor his early followers, made any organized protest against prison procedure, and that they did not initiate any systematic movement for reform. . . . in retrospect, it must appear that opportunities for effective 7 concerted action were sadly missed."' Wesley preached to the debtors in the Marshalsea, but others gave money for their release. Henry Fielding and Dr. Johnson wrote essays exposing the folly of imprisoning a 200 man for debt and, thus, preventing his ever earning money to pay it, besides depriving his family of their breadwinner, I think [says Fielding in The True Patriot*] Humanity will not suffer [a creditorJ (Christi- anity certainly will not) to inflict one of the most grievous Punishments (for such is the Loss of Liberty) on an unhappy Man, and complete the Huin of his Family. . . . An untimely Prosecu­ tion hath prevented many an honest Man of dis­ charging his Debt. How foolish, as well as barbarous, is it to defeat the Purposes of Industry, when it labours probably for your own Good! He goes on to wish that "the Legislature had itself taken from [creditors]] the Power of exerting their Cruelty, and had suspended the Laws by which Men are arrested for Debt, Q at the same time when they suspended the Habeas Corpus." Dr. Johnson expresses a similar wish in Idler No. 38. After describing the unhealthy conditions in prisons and noting that incarceration with hardened criminals merely corrupts an innocent debtor, he hopes "that oqr lawgivers will at length take away from us this power of starving and deprav- 9 ing one another." Wesley prayed for the condemned in Newgate, but the Gentleman»s Magazine, more helpfully, in May 1750 published an article querying "whether the constant and regular assembling to take away so many lives at every sessions, for crimes not really punishable with death, according either to the Old and New Testament, ought not to be con­ sidered on this occasion, and some corporal punishment to be appointed instead of a capital" (XX, 235). Dr. Johnson devoted Rambler No. 114 to a discussion of the "many dis- 201 proportions between crimes and punishments," in which he urged that the number of capital crimes be reduced, 10 Such legislative reform was badly needed* during the reign of George II sixty-three new offences became capital, and Blackstone estimated the total number of these crimes at

160 in 1770. 11 There is ample evidence, then, of a conscientious attempt on the part of Parliament, of periodical writers and of private citizens to improve the lot of the imprisoned in the early and middle eighteenth century. The English novelists, by sending their characters to Jail, and thus publicizing the frightful abuses to which the helpless prisoner was subjected, are among those who helped to awaken the public conscience,

Henry Fielding, as a lawyer and as London*s leading magistrate, naturally took great interest in prisons. One abuse that bothered him was the discrepancy between crime and punishment, especially when necessity drives a man to theft. In the True Patriot (No, 11) apropos of a rumor that Jacobite rebels taken at Carlisle are to be sent to London prisons, he remarks, "It is hoped these poor Wretches, whom the Hardness of the Times, and the greater Hardness of their diabolical Condition, have confined in these Gaols, will be obliged to make Room for those who so much better deserve their Places." The next month he notes in No. 15 of the same publication the commitment to prison of "Francis Otter for picking up Bread; I hope not out of mere Necessity." 202

All three of Fielding’s major novels take up this failure of British law to make the punishment commensurate with the crime. Tom Jones is held up by Anderson, the amateur high­ wayman carrying an unloaded pistol, who asserts that he was driven to crime by "the greatest [[distress'] indeed imaginable, that of five hungry children, and a wife lying in of the sixth in the utmost want and misery” (III, 28). Tom gives the man a few guineas and sends him on his way with the wish that he had more to give. Our readers [says Fielding] will probably be divided in their opinions concerning this action; some may applaud it perhaps as an act of extraordinary humanity, while those of a more saturnine temper will consider it as a want of regard to that Justice which every man owes his country (III, 29). Fielding's most scathing criticism of unnecessarily severe punishment, however, is reserved for his last novel, Amelia. Billy Booth, Imprisoned on a false accusation of having attacked the watch, took notice of a young woman in rags sitting on the ground, and supporting the head of an old man in her lap, who appeared to be giving up the ghost. These, Mr. Robinson [his fellow prisoner"] informed him, were father and daughter; that the latter was committed for stealing a loaf, in order to support the former, and the former for receiving it, knowing it to be stolen (I, 27-28). The punishment for felony was death, and if convicted, the young woman stood a very good chance of being hanged. But fortunately for such "criminals,” the Georgian social conscience was at work. As Dr. Johnson observes, Juries often refused to convict because of the undue severity of 203 the laws. "They who would rejoice at the correction of a thief," he says, "are yet shocked at the thought of destroy­ ing him. His crime shrinks to nothing, compared with his 12 misery; and severity defeats itself by exciting pity." The inequity of the law becomes clear in Amelia when Billy Booth encounters a perjurer who expects to be immediate­ ly admitted to bail. His remarks illustrate Fielding's belief in the necessity for legislative reform. "Good Heaven!" cries Booth, "can such villains find ball, and is no person charitable enough to bail that poor father and daughter?" "Oh! sir," answered Robinson, "the offense of the daughter, being felony, is held not to be bailable in law; whereas perjury is a mis­ demeanor only; and therefore persons who are even indicted for it are, nevertheless, capa­ ble of being bailed. Nay, of all perjuries, that of which this man is indicted is the worst; for it was with an Intention of taking away the life of an innocent person by form of law. As to perjuries in civil matters, they are not so very criminal." "They are not," said Booth; "and yet even these are a most flagitious offense, and worthy the highest punishment." "Surely they ought to be dis­ tinguished," answered Robinson, "from the others: for what is taking away a little property from a man, compared to taking away his life and his reputation, and ruin­ ing his family into the bargain?— I hope there can be no comparison in the crimes, and I think there ought to be none in the punishment. However, at present, the punish­ ment of all perjury is only pillory and trans­ portation for seven years; and, as it is a traversable and bailable offense, methods are found to escape any punishment at all" (I. 28). And even when necessity is not the cause of crime, Fielding deplores excessive punishment. He sends Squire Booby to rescue his brother-in-law Joseph from the local J. P. with whom Lady Booby has conspired to prevent Joseph 20k and Fanny from marrying. Joseph had cut a hazel twig worth three half pence, which he gave to Fanny. By accepting this twig, Fanny became guilty of comforting, aiding and abetting the criminal Joseph. ”'Jesul' said [[Squire Booby to the lawyer Scout"] 'would you commit two persons to Bridewell for a twig?' 'Yes,' said the lawyer, ‘and with great lenity, too; for if we had called it a young tree, they would have been both hanged", (3 2 8). The defect of the English law that allowed a creditor to imprison his debtor, regardless of whether or not he was attempting to repay his debt to the best of his ability, was another injustice of which the novelists were extremely critical. Two foreigners, one a Swiss, the other a Scotsman, commented on this aspect of English law in the eighteenth century. CSsar De Saussure reproved the British in 1729 for sending debtors to prison where no provision was made for their maintenance and where they had no opportunity of earn­ ing money to pay off their debts. In his opinion, the law gave too much power to the creditor who needed ‘'only show a bill or present two witnesses who declare on oath that a person owes him a sum that he will not or cannot pay, [and[] the magistrate at once gives a warrant to a sort of sergeant called a bailiff, a person generally regarded by the people 13 with great contempt.” And James Boswell on one occasion, at least, managed to maintain in Dr. Johnson's presence the superiority of Scotland over England since no man can be arrested [[in Scotland[] for a debt merely because another swears it against him; but there must first be the judgement of a court of law ascertaining its justice; and that a seizure of the person, before judgement is obtained, can take place only, if his credi­ tor should swear that he is about to fly from the country, or, as it is technically expressed, is In meditations fugae.1^ Doctor Johnson could not very well refute Boswell*s claim because in 1758 he himself had been very critical of the laws of his own country in regard to the creditors* power. In his opinion, not even “the most zealous admirers of our institu­ tions can think that law wise, which, when men are capable of work, obliges them to beg; or Just, which exposes the liberty of one to the passions of another.” He deplores the fact that a creditor, by imprisoning a debtor, "is allowed to be the judge of his own cause, and to assign the punish­ ment of his own pain," and believes that Justice is subverted "when the distinction between guilt and happiness, between casualty and design, is intrusted to eyes blind with interest, to understandings depraved by resentment."1'* In their novels, Henry Fielding, Edward Klmber and the author of Charlotte Summers Join De Saussure, Boswell and Dr. Johnson in condemning avaricious creditors. Mr. Wilson tells Parson Adams of the occasion when he was taken to Jail for a tailor*s bill of £3 5» despite the fact that previously he "had spent vastsums of money with him, and had always paid most punctually." Surely, remarks Parson Adams in all his innocence, "the tailor released you the moment he was truly acquainted with your affairs, and knew that your 206

circumstances would, not permit you to pay him." Unf ortunately for human nature, the tailor told poor Wilson that he must either find security for the debt or “lie in gaol and expect no mercy" (2^7-248). This incident could serve as a gloss on Dr. Johnson's statement that Justice is subverted when the assignment of punishment is "intrusted to eyes blind with interest, to understandings depraved by resentment." And when Fielding wants a simile to illustrate Squire Western's relentlessness to his despairing daughter, he compares the two to creditor and debtor. The Squire, he says, "looked down on her with the same emotions which arise in an honest fair tradesman who sees his debtor dragged to prison for £10, which, though a Just debt, the wretch is wickedly unable to pay” (III, 207-208). The creditor whose debtor was a woman sometimes had an ulterior motive in lending money as Charlotte Summers finds out to her dismay. Her landlady, Mrs. Massey, and a neighbor­ ing linen-draper, having given credit to the destitute Charlotte, demand payment. When she reminds them that they knew she had neither friends or money when they first offered to help her and asks why they demand impossibilities, she learns that the purpose has been to force her into a situa­ tion where she must choose between prison and prostitution, her creditors not doubting that the latter will seem the more attractive. Charlotte very properly declines the alternative and chooses prison, after telling the bawds in lady-like but unmistakable terms exactly what she thinks of 20? them. Both plaintiffs are enraged, and it is vengeance, not payment, that they want. "Come, Sir [says the linen-draper3, turning to the Bailiff, who was present all this while, take her to Prison, here are your Pees. I will see the Baggage carried off before I stir, I’ll teach her to give me Names, so I shall" (II, 277). The remorselessness and inhumanity of the creditor who condemns his debtor to a living death is most strongly criticized, however, in Edward Kimber's novel. His hero Joe Thompson backs a £.600 note for his friend Mr. Deacon. When Deacon drops dead before the note is paid, leaving his affairs in disorder, Joe is taken for the debt. Lodged in the Fleet, he is exposed to the full misery of the eighteenth- century jail, and among the objects of pity that he sees there are debtors "cursing the remorseless wretches, who had suffered them to linger out so many years in misery and dis­ tress, without any view or prospect, but that of satiating their Inhumanity" (122). As far as Joe can discern, "no condition can be more calamitous, more to be pitied, than that of an unfortunate wretch under confinement for debt," and he blames the "incensed creditors, [who] fired with their injuries, are apt to think his punishment just, and, arrogantly assuming to themselves the authority of Heaven, call down vengeance, and inflict tortures, unceasing tortures, on his head" in flat contradiction to Christian teaching (126). Nothing, thinks Joe, can equal the mental tortures of the imprisoned debtor, except "those of the remorseless creditor, who under the sanction of laws, too much abused, shall dally, hourly, become the torturer of some unhappy honest family, whose misfortunes only have rendered them Insolvent: yet such there are, who, in our church service, every day still repeat, Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (123). The climax of Kimber’s criticism comes when Joe apostrophizes a Just Heaven! when will the blissful time arive, that man, thy substitute below, shall cease to tear and rend his fellow-creaturel shall cease to be designing, cruel, base, and act In every thing consistent with his nature and his make! Lions their fellow-lions ne'er devour, and tigers love their kind! Each savage, prouling £slc] through the howling desart, with fiery eyes and baneful glare, in search of needful prey, still spares his likeness, wars not on his brother! but man ungrateful for every blessing thou hast on him bestowed, with ruthless ravages deforms his soul, and triumphs in his neighbour’s wretchedness; nor feels the pitying thought, nor finds the melting tear, for others [sic] woes! [12 ^]. Once the creditor had taken out his writ and the bailiff had served it, the first stop for the poor debtor was the bailiff’s residence, or the sponging-house. Here he was held until it was ascertained whether or not he could produce security for his debt. If not, he was then committed 17 to jail to await trial. And his trial was probably long delayed, usually at least a year, sometimes much longer. At Hull, for instance, the Assizes met only every seven years, and those arrested just after one session, stayed in jail 18 until the next one. It was at the sponging-house that the poor debtor first encountered one of the most paradoxical 209 features of the Georgian jail--a man who was too poor to pay his just debts was expected to pay for his own food, to buy liquor for the entertainment of his jailers and the other inmates, and to pay for a room. The amount of money that he spent determined whether he were allowed a room and bed to himself, put into a garret to share a bed with several other prisoners, or loaded with irons. The novelists recognized and were not slow to criticize this paradox, Joe Thompson upon arrival at the bailiff’s is immediately met by a demand for two and sixpence "footing" for a bowl of punch and finds the other expenses of the establishment so exorbitant that he almost immediately resolves not to pay for anything and instead lets himself be removed to the Fleet because, he says, "I could not help thinking it far preferable to the dungeon-life I led at present, and was likely to do if I continued at the spunging-house any longer" (120). When he comes to reckon up his expenses while at the bailiff's, he makes very clear the wisdom of this decision, as well as his criticism of the bailiff and of the law which permits this state of affairss Gain is the god [bailiffs] worship! and I will venture to say, there is not one in an hundred that has either honour or honesty. At night I experienced the extortion of such infernal houses, and was charged three shillings for my bed, two shillings for fir­ ing, and five shillings extraordinary for occupying the room by myself; which, with what my dinners, suppers, and liquors, came to, in their way of reckoning, amounted for the day and an half I staid there, to forty shillings and upwards, besides the half 210 guinea I gave the officer: yet this is suffered in a country subject to the best laws, and where we boast so much of our liberty, and the privi­ leges of Englishmen! (121) Roderick Random, Clarissa and Billy Booth have experiences similar to Joe Thompson1 s, and their authors all show indigna­ tion at expecting a destitute man to bear these expenses.

Arrested for debt, Roderick Random refuses 11 to go to a sponging-house, where I heard there was nothing but the most flagrant imposition,” he says, ”and, a coach being called, was carried to the Marshalsea, attended by a bailiff and his follower, who were very much disappointed and chagrined at my resolution” (II, 235). The prisoner who refused to pay fees at a sponging house was, of course, depriving the bailiff of his source of income, Roderick's friend Miss Williams, in the same plight, chooses the bailiff's house, but when it is discovered that she has no money, the bailiff "swore he never gave credit, and ordered one of his myrmidons to call a coach to carry her to the Marshalsea" (I, 179). Fielding is Just as incensed as Kimber and Smollett at this practice and expresses his sentiments through Dr. Harrison, After Billy Booth has been intimidated into buying expensive meals and drinks, he is expected on departure to pay "civility money” to the bailiff. According to Dr. Harrison, the "civility” in this case refers to the fact that the bailiff "behaved himself as he ought" rather than in "an unchristian and inhuman manner," and he refuses to let Booth pay even a shilling. He regrets that "instead of a custom of feeing [bailiffs] out of the pockets of the poor and wretched, when 211 they do not behave themselves ill, there was not a law and a practice to punish them severely when they do, . . . for there are none whose conduct should be so strictly watched as that of these necessary evils in the society, as their office concerns for the most part those poor creatures who cannot do themselves justice, and as they are generally the worst of men who undertake it" (II, 120-121). When Richardson sends Clarissa to a sponging-house, he does not comment specifically on the evil of excessive fees as Smollett and Fielding do through Roderick Random and Dr. Harrison, but he nonetheless makes the reader aware that the Impoverished Clarissa is expected to pay for her maintenance while there. His purpose here is not so much to expose the practices of bailiffs as to add one more burden to those which his heroine already bears with such superhuman patience and mildness. When asked whether or not she has any money, Clarissa meekly put her hand in her pocket, and pulled out half a guinea, and a little silver. Yes, I have a little.— But here should fees be paid, I believe. Should there not? I have heard of entrance-money to compound for not being stript. But these people are very civil people, I fansy £sic^; for they have not offered to take away my oloaths (VI, 2 7 9). Later, the bailiff's wife, fearing that her charge will starve, urges her to eat: If it be for your own sakes, said [Clarissa^], that is another thing: Let coffee, or tea, or chocolate, or what you will, be got: And put down a chicken to my account every day, if you please, and eat it yourselves. I will taste it, if I can . . . I have friends will pay you 212

liberally, when they know I am gone (VI, 285). Clarissa*s quarters are dismal in the extreme, Belford describes her room as a den, "with broken walls, which had been papered, as I saw by a multitude of tacks, and some torn bits held on by the rusty heads.*1 The smoky ceiling is carved with "initials of names, that had been the woeful employment of wretches who had no other way to amuse them­ selves"; the bedcovers are tattered and the bedcurtains nailed to the ceiling because the curtain rings are broken; the windows are barred and partially boarded up, except for one open pane which lets in air; the chairs and sofa have broken legs and the stuffing is oozing out; the table is wormeaten and the mortar gone from the chimney bricks. There is "an old looking-glass, cracked thro* the middle, breaking out into a thousand points; the crack given it, perhaps, in a rage, by some poor creature, to whom it gave the representa­ tion of his heart's woes in his face" (VI, 2 9 7). Belford*s description leads the reader from Clarissa's particular case to the unnumbered other human beings formerly incarcerated in that room, many of them for no other sin than poverty. The author of Charlotte Summers also sends his heroine to a sponging-house at one point in her career, but he seems unable to make up his mind whether he approves of bailiffs or not. When he first introduces Charlotte to the premises, he Inserts a condemnation of bailiffs that is not borne out by subsequent developments in the novel. It Is with Pain Qhe says^ I lead the good- 213 natured Reader to this Scene of Sorrow; the Horror of a Spunging-Hous e to a young Creature bred in great Delicacy must easily occur to the Imagination without any Description (II, 271). He then goes on to remark that Charlotte's sorrow so enhanced her beauty that even the Beasts of Prey that inhabited this Place of Misery, felt some Part of her Anguish, abated of their natural Ferocity; and to alleviate her Grief as much as possi­ ble, treated her with more Tenderness than one could well expect from their brutal Dispositions (II, 271). The problem is that nowhere do the bailiff and his wife give evidence of these "brutal dispositions." From the very beginning, he is excessively sympathetic to Charlotte, even ordering a coach to take her to the sponging house because "he would not, he said, have the Lady exposed in the Street" (II, 270-271). His wife, upon first meeting Charlotte, is so moved to pity that she refuses to charge her for food, telling her "she was welcome to any thing in her House with­ out a Farthing" (II, 2 7 3). Furthermore, the bailiff by a certain amount of after-hours detective work manages to turn the tables on Charlotte's creditors and is ultimately responsible for her release. He exerts himself on her behalf simply out of the goodness of his heart. The evi­ dence here suggests that the author's initial condemnation of these people is a sop thrown to convention. By the time Charlotte Summers appeared in 1753. novelists like Fielding, Richardson, Smollett and Kimber had done their work so well that it was routine to criticize bailiffs and sponging 214 houses. The reader expected this condemnation, and the author gave it to him, though his plot subsequently required a good- natured bailiff. Once the prisoner ran out of money or, like Joe Thomp­ son, refused to pay the bailiff anything further, he was transferred to one of the regular prisons to await his trial. This was not the end of his expenses, however— he merely exchanged the bailiff for the Jailer as a payee, and there was, frankly, not much to choose between the two. As Sidney and Beatrice Webb have remarked, when a man went to prison— be he debtor or felon— "Every incident in the prison life, from admission to discharge, was made the occasion for a fee." There were fees for admission, for detention in a particular section of the prison, for a separate room, for a bed, for a mattress (the price depending upon whether it were "flock, dust or other ordinary"), for bedclothes, for a copy of the commitment and even for the smith who put on 19 and took off irons. y There was also the notorious "garnish" or "footing" to be coped with. The newly arrived prisoner was expected to provide garnish money for drink for the established inhabitants. Should the prisoner be unable to pay this fee, his clothes were torn off and sold to obtain the money; he was "left naked to eke out a wretched existence, forbidden to approach the fire, to lie on the straw, or share 20 in the daily doles of food made by the charitable." When Billy Booth's financial embarrassment forces him to decline complying with "this laudable custom," the keeper of the prison 215 left him "to the mercy of his companions, who without loss of time applied themselves to uncasing, as they termed it, and with such dexterity, that his coat was not only stripped off, hut out of sight in a minute" (I, 22). Jailers as well as prisoners had to be garnished. Joe Thompson on entering the Fleet is met by the head turnkey, who demands, in addition to an entrance fee of two shillings, "a compliment of a bottle of wine to the rest of his colleagues1' (121). Those who did not or could not pay such entrance fees were, according to the report of the Select Committee of 1729, turned into the common side of the prison or sometimes actually put into dungeons or irons, depending 21 upon the whim of the keeper. Eighteenth-century prisons urere divided into two sections. The master's side was reserved for those who could pay for the privilege of a private or semi-private room; those who could not afford to pay lodged In the common side, and the description provided by the 1729 report makes clear why anyone who had the money chose to live on the master's side. The wards in the Fleet were crowded, noisome and disease- ridden. Healthy prisoners were forced to share the same wards (and sometimes the same beds) with those suffering 22 from contagious diseases. Those who could not provide their own bedding or pay the jailer a shilling for it were forced to sleep on the floor. In the Marshalsea conditions were just as bad, fifty people being sometimes locked up at

night in a room 16 feet square. Thirty-two prisoners slept for a year in the George’s Ward of the Marshalsea, a room six­ teen by fourteen by eight feet. Since all of them could not lie down at once, half were slung in hammocks. Every night at eight o ’clock (nine o ’clock in the summer) these people were locked in. There were no toilet facilities and the air, especially in the summer, became so stifling that several 23 prisoners suffocated. ^ Those whom the jailer for any reason disliked were completely at his mercy and subject to even worse treatment, and jailers particularly disliked prisoners who did not spend money. One John Mackpheadris who refused to pay Bambridge, the jailer, an exorbitant fee for a room in the Fleet was put into irons which were too small and confined in a dungeon— treatment that lamed him for life and severely damaged his eyesight. Jacob Mendes Solas, a Portuguese, was put into a dungeon in the Fleet where bodies of dead prisoners were kept until the coroner’s inquest. It had no chimney, no windows and no light; and it adjoined “the sink and dunghill, where all the nastiness of the prison is cast.” The location was particularly unfortunate since the brick walls were not plastered and 24 the sewage leaked into the dungeon. Heartfree in Jonathan Wilde is accused of embezzlement and committed to Newgate, where ’’the turnkey would have confined [[him] (he having no money) amongst the common felons; but Friendly would not permit it, and advanced every shilling he had in his pocket, to procure a room in 25 the press-yard for his friend.” It does not matter that 217 Heartfree1s alleged crime is a felony: he is still able to get better quarters merely because he has money. Were his crime simply that he was poor, he would have been thrown in on the common side. Miss Matthews in Amelia is brought to Bridewell charged with murder* she asks whether it is intended that she shall take up her lodging "with these creatures" (meaning Booth, a poor lame soldier who was falsely accused of stealing three herrings, and a young girl who had taken bread for her dying father, among others). The keeper tells her, "Madam, we have rooms for those who can afford to pay for them." She reassures him that "she was not come thither on account of poverty;" at which point the keeper's "features became all softened in an instant; and, with all the courtesy of which he was master, he desired the lady to walk with him, assuring her that she should have the best apartment in his house" (I, 30-31). Joseph Andrews' father, Mr. Wilson, is sent to prison where he is unable to pay for entrance on the master's side, and, consequently, he says, "I was crowded in with a great number of miserable wretches, in common with whom I was destitute of every convenience of life, even that which all the brutes enjoy, wholesome air . . . which, in a land of humanity, and, what is much more, Christianity, seems a strange punishment for a little inadvertency and indiscre­ tion" (2^9). In order to illustrate the power of money in a prison, Chetwood contrasts the treatment his hero receives when he 218 first comes to Newgate with the obsequious attitude of the jailers once a friend pays his debts and releases him. The merchant Thomson in The Virgin Widow arrives at Newgate destitute, and There the poor Gentleman was obliged to lie on the Boards all Night without a Morsel of Pood or any Thing to cover him. In that dismal Plight he past the Night, with Sighs and Sorrows, begging to Heaven for Death to take him out of this barbarous World (107). Later Thomson is brought new clothes and cash by his friend: "The Keepers changed their Note, says Chetwood, when Mr. Thomson appear'd to have Money." They obsequiously offer him the best room in the establishment, and one of them berates the other for not providing the gentleman with a room. Thomson declines the room, and the "Keepers were not over pleased at this Declaration, leaving him with discon­ tented Paces" (109). The prisoner who could pay for admission on the master's side was assured a slightly better lodging than those on the common side, but not always. There were often more prospective prisoners with money than there were accommoda­ tions, but this did not prevent jailers' admitting all affluent comers. Peregrine Pickle, in the master's side of the Fleet, records that sometimes, after a couple had been quartered in every room, there was a considerable residue still unprovided with lodging; so that for the time being, the last comers were obliged to take up their habitation in Mount Scoundrel, an apartment most miserably furnished, in which they lay promiscuously amidst filth and 219 vermin, until they could be better accommodated in due course of rotation (6 7 9). Joe Thompson also notices in the Fleet "a narrow kind of passage, which stunk most abominably, and which I understood afterwards was called Mount Scoundrel" (123). When Roderick Random first came to London, he and Strap were able to rent a small bedroom for two shillings per week (I, 90), but when he is taken to the Marshalsea, he must pay a crown (more than twice as much) for a "paltry bedchamber" (II, 235), and for half a crown Peregrine Pickle is allowed to take possession of "a paltry chamber in The Fleet (679). Joe Thompson, also in the Fleet, pays the same price for a room, that I presume had been, some twenty years before, whitewashed, but now was so black, and the walls so decayed, that the light pervaded it in several places, and, at the top, I had through several cracks a clear view of the azure sky: a sordid bed, covered with Horse-cloaths rather than blankets, and a rug that had received many a gorgeous party-coloured patch, which seemed to speak variety of wretchedness; a grate, consisting of three worn-out crooked bars; a chair or two without backs; and a table, which of a foot was lame (1 2 3). All prisoners who wanted to avoid the common side had to pay for lodgings, but the debtor who wanted to eat also had to pay for his food. The jailer was not responsible for feeding his prisoners, but justices granted money from the parish levy for food for all prisoners, except debtors. The people who were most likely to have no money to pay for their own food were the only ones excluded from the meagre parish ration, and without the help of friends or benevolent strangers they would have starved. 220

Billy Booth’s situation in the Bridewell is a little better than that of the debtors, since he was committed for having attacked the watch, rather than for debt. He was destitute of the common necessaries of life, and consequently unable to subsist where - he was; nor was there a single person in town to whom he could, with any reasonable hope, apply for his delivery. Grief for some time banished the thoughts of food from his mind; but in the morning nature began to grow un­ easy for want of her usual nourishment: for he had not eaten a morsel during the last forty hours. A penny loaf, which is, it seems, the ordinary allowance to the prison­ ers in Bridewell, was now delivered him (I, 32). Had Booth been a debtor, he would not have had even the penny loaf. Peregrine Pickle, a debtor in the Fleet, deplores that imprisoned debtors are accompanied by their families, who have no money either and thus are forced to share their sufferings. Peregrine’s overt condemnation of these condi­ tions makes Smollett’s attitude very clear. His ears, he says, were continually "invaded with the cries of the hapless wife, who from the enjoyment of affluence and pleasure, was forced to follow her husband to this abode of wretchedness and want; his eyes were every minute assailed with the naked and meagre appearances of hunger and cold; and his fancy teamed with a thousand aggravations of their misery." A man, he says at another point, must "be void of all sympathy and compassion, who can reside among so many miserable objects, without feeling an inclination to relieve their distress" (7^6-7). After Joe Thompson's ready money gives out, he is forced to pawn his clothes, his watch and any other valuables, 221 so that a few weeks, he says, "saw me stripped to one coat, two shirts, a pair of breeches, stockings, and shoes." He was obliged to stop taking his meals in the taproom and "shooled [sic] about, and picked up a dinner here and there in the prison; and more than a score of times [went] the whole day without nourishment" until he was forced to live for ten days on bread and water. Often, he tells us, "a biscuit and a dram of Geneva, together with the water from the pump, made my repast for four and twenty hours; and I wished earnestly for death, to hide my shame, and terminate my grief and miseries at once" (126). After three months of prison, he (not unnaturally) loses any "relish for life": [I] was now reduced to so sad a state, that my remaining cloaths hardly sufficed to cover my nakedness, and my toes peeped through the yawning chasms time had made in my shoes; so that I could not stir out of my room, and was almost starved (128). ' It is Henry Fielding, however, who most clearly shows us the jailer’s tendency to charge prisoners for absolutely anything. Just as Heartfree is about to be hanged on Jonathan Wild’s perjured evidence, his wife returns from abroad. Heart- free, addressing himself to the commanding officer, begged he might only have a few minutes by himself with his wife, whom he had not seen since before his misfortunes. The great man answered: ’He had compassion on him, and would do more than he could answer; but he supposed he was too much a gentleman not to know that something was due for such civili­ ty. ’ On this hint, .Friendly [Heartfree’s apprentice], who was himself half dead, pulled five guineas out of his pocket, which the great man took, and said he would be so 222

generous to give him ten minutes'1 (l6o-l6l). Dr. Harrison's remark on the civility of bailiffs canjust as easily apply to jailers— "civility” means that for a fee one refrains from acting in "an unchristian and inhuman" manner. The most flagrant injustice which the eighteenth-century prisoner had to face was the payment of fees for his release. In a criminal case, the defendent who was found innocent still had to remain in jail until all fees, including those owed to the jailer were paid. For a debtor, the original amount of the debt was often the least of his expenses; even if he managed to raise this sum, he still had to pay all prison fees before being set free. James Neild, founder of a society for the relief and discharge of small debtors, records the case of a man original­ ly taken for a debt of one shilling, who in addition to paying this sum, had also to pay 8s. lid. expenses to recover the debt, plus 15s. 8d. fees to the Jailer before he could be 28 released. Cesar De Saussure while visiting the Tottlefields Bridewell, encountered "a mere child" committed for two weeks for theft. The girl had served her sentence but was still imprisoned because "she could not pay the crown she owed for extra food" and as a result she expected never to be released. When De Saussure gave her a shilling, the jailer immediately tookhalf of it, pleading prison "custom” as his excuse. This act so incensed the Swiss that he Immediately paid the girl’s fees and procured her freedom.Letitia Pilklngton, impris­ oned in the Marshalsea for a debt of forty shillings, has the 223 same problem as De Saussure*s young girl. Through the exer­ tions of Colley Cibber, sixteen dukes were persuaded to contribute a guinea each toward her release~a total of 336 shillings,— but after paying her original debt and all fees due to the jailer, she had exactly thirteen shillings left. Her original debt of thirteen shillings had in about three months time grown to 323 shillings.^0 Fielding touches on this abuse in the person of the one-legged Gibraltar veteran who is incarcerated in the Bridewell, falsely accused of stealing three herrings from a fishmonger, *'He was tried several months ago for this offense,” Robinson tells Billy Booth, “and acquitted; in­ deed, his innocence manifestly appeared at the trial; but he was brought back again for his fees, and here he hath lain ever since” (I, 28-29), Jonathan Wild's accomplice, Count la Ruse, is arrested for failure to pay his tailor, and Fielding remarks acidly that "the law of the land is, that whoever owes another £10, or indeed £2, may be, on the oath of that person, immediately taken up and carried away from his own house and family, and kept abroad till he is made to owe £50, whether he will or no; for which he is perhaps afterwards obliged to lie in gaol” (12). Fielding's purpose in this incident is deliberate criticism of the law; he goes out of his way to insert this comment because he is not trying to arouse sympathy for la Ruse— the Count is a villain, and we are not meant to sympathize with him. The statement is gratuitous insofar as it is not intended for any 224 purpose other than that of social criticism. The evils of this system of charging fees to prisoners had been revealed "by the findings of the Select Committee of

1 7 2 9, but nothing was done to remedy the situation. One of John Howard's chief recommendations for improving the adminis­ tration of prisons was that a salaried staff be appointed "so that gaolers would have no need to resort to extortion or 31 overworking of their charges to secure a reasonable living."^ In 1752 the Gentleman's Magazine had exposed this same abuse in a letter to editor Sylvanus Urban from one A. P., imprisoned for felony, though afterwards proved to be entire­ ly innocent. Instead of being released after the jury's verdit, says A. P., I was hurried back again to prison, there to lie till I could raise 30s. to pay the gaoler what he calls his fees.— If any situation on earth merits pity, or any evil merits the attention of the legislature, surely 'tis the case of unhappy prisoners in my circum­ stances. I have lain here six months, my family starving, my credit and character ruined, and my spirits broken, without any means of procuring redress against the un­ just prosecutor, or any satisfaction for the numerous calamities which he has brought upon me. A. P. then pleads for just the reform which Howard was to recommend twenty-odd years later: If gaolers must have large salaries for the execution of their office, let the public pay them, and let not the sufferings of the wretched be increased by their rapine and inflexibility. The editor, in a footnote, calls the legislature inexcusable "for having neglected to add so valuable a blessing to his 225 majesty's mild and happy reign" (XXII, 2^), The last word on prison reform belongs to Edward Kimber. With the possible exception of Fielding in Amelia, he shows us at greater length and in greater detail than does any other novelist exactly what prison conditions were like in his day, and his Joe Thompson speaks out against these conditions more passionately than any other character does. If [says Joe] benevolence is due to our fellow- creatures in general, how much more so is it to that part of them who are thus exiled from the community, and for a misfortune, perhaps, rather than a fault, as is the case of numbers, doomed to a melancholy gloom, shut up within relentless walls and bars, without the means to support, even there, the wretched remains of life! . . . Oh! I have seen, and have sick­ ened at the horrid sight, numbers of wretches, capable of being useful, in the highest degree, to the publick, secluded from all the privi­ leges of men and Christians, pale famine wast­ ing them away by slow degrees, and grievous oppression grinding them to death! These are the greater number that fill our English prisons, and every minute, with bitter anguish, curse the hour they were born, and invoke an end of their wretched beings. . . . »0 h, Britain! thou land of liberty! how canst thou view disgrace like this, and suffer many thousands to be torn from useful labour, arts and sciences, for ills, the lot of human race, or unwary indiscretions! Lives there a man, who, kindly sympathizing, pities human woes, who gives the quick reliefs to wasting sorrow! all humane, great, and good, the pride, the glory, of his native country, who feels for suffering merit's deep dis­ tress! (1 2 6 -7 ). Such men were, indeed, living, and by the time of Howard's reports they had awakened the public conscience and accus­ tomed their fellow-citizens to the idea that such social ills could be cured. 226

NOTES

-I G. M. Trevelyan, History of England, p. 526, and D. L. Howard, The English Prisons: Their Past and Future (London, i9 6 0), p. 9. O Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Prisons under Local Government (New York, 1922), pp. 20 -3O.

•^For similar notices in other London papers, see W. S. Lewis, Private Charity in England, 1747-1754 (New Haven, 1938)• 4 Whiteley, Wesley1s England, pp. 221-222.

^Egmont, Diaries, II, pp. 159 and 3^4.

/ r Egmont, Diaries, II, p. 330.

^Peter J. Collingwood, "Prison Visitation in the Methodist Revival," London Quarterly and. Holborn Review, CLXXX (1955). 2 9 0.

^Fielding, The True Patriot, No. 5 (Dec. 3, 1745). The government had suspended habeas corpus on the outbreak of the Stuart Rebellion of 17^5*

^Johnson, Complete Works, V, 206.

1 0 ' Johnson, Complete Works. Ill, 8.

■^Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, VI, 246.

^Johnson, Complete Works. Ill, 11.

•^DeSaussure, A Foreign View of England, p. 342.

^Boswell*s Life of Johnson, III, p. 77*

■'-“’Johnson, Complete Works. V, l4l-l42. 227

Even In prison Charlotte would not have been safe from prostitution, according to an article in the Gentle­ man* s Magazine of June 1757 (XXVII, 268-2 6 9). A prison, says the writer, is a "mart where those who subsist by keeping prostitutes in their houses, come to supply them­ selves with the number they want. It is common for the keeper of a bagnio or his servant to come to this place, call for a bottle or two of wine, look over the girls, enquire when their times are out, and, having made choice of such as they think fit for their purpose, they pay their fees and take them home." This article is a review of a 1757 pamphlet, Reasons for the Reformation of the House of Correction at Clerkenwell, by Jacob Hive.

■^B. M. Jones. Henry Fielding as Novelist and Magistrate, p. 216.

■^D. L. Howard, The English Prisons, pp. 6-7 .

•^Webb, English Prisons under Local Government, pp. 5-6.

20 Traill, Social England. V, 6 5 8.

21Willlam Cobbett, Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England from the Norman Conquest, in 1066, to the Year 1 8 0 3. 36 vols. (London, I8O6-1 8 2 0 ), VIII, 717.

22James Oglethorpe's friend, an architect named Castell, had in 1722 been committed to the Fleet for debt. He was forced to share quarters with prisoners suffering from smallpox and died of the disease, "leaving a numerous young family in destitution." As a result of this tragedy, Oglethorpe demanded and got the appoint­ ment of the Select Committee of 1729 which investigated the state of the English prisons. (Strathearn Gordon and T. G. B. Cocks, A People's Conscience: Six Typical Enquiries [1729-1837] by Select Committees of the House of Commons [^London, 19 52^'. p p . 17-18.

2 ^Cobbett, Parliamentary History, VIII, 711 and 73^*

^Cobbett, Parliamentary History. VIII, 718-720. 228

2-’Henry Fielding, The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great, ed. W. E. Henley (New York, 1902), p. 135. ?6 Webb, English Prisons under Local Government, p. 9, note 1.

2^0ne of the most satisfying cases of poetic justice that I know of occurred in 17*4* when Bernard Bond was tried for murder at the Court of Admiralty at Old Bailey. He had allowed several persons on board a ship transporting them to the plantations to die of thirst. Among the deceased was William Bird, keeper of St. Martin's Roundhouse, sentenced to transportation for allowing three of his prisoners to suffocate and for refusing them "even a DRAUGHT OF WATER" (Gentleman1s Magaz ine, XIV [17^4], 226).

p 8 Whiteley, Wesley's England, p. 220.

2^DeSaussure, A Foreign View of England, p. 302.

^°Pilkington, Memoirs, p. 279-

^Howard, The English Prisons, p. 9* CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

The evidence presented in the preceding three chapters justifies the generalization that the new novel was used as a vehicle of conscious social criticism. Of course, by the very act of accurately depicting their world, the novelists were obliged to expose its deficiencies, but the frequency with which they chose to concentrate on the most flagrant injustices of their age indicates their conscious critical purpose. In placing the novel in its social context, we first asked how reliable the novelists were as reflectors of actual social conditions. According to my interpretation of the evidence from non-fictional sources vis-A-vis the novels, the answer is that the early novelists can be trusted to tell us what life was really like for mistreated women, children and prisoners in the 17^0's and 1750’s. The fictional lives of Clarissa Harlowe's mother, Joe Thompson’s Mrs. Modish, and Betsy Thoughtless suggest that wives could be victimized by husbands with inordinate power. This state of affairs is confirmed from non-fictlonal sources by the legal opinions of Blackstone and Judge Hide, who testify to

229 230 the wife's legal nonexistence, and by the comments of women like Laetitia Pilkington and Mrs, Delany, both of whom had experience of a wife's helplessness under a tyrannical husband. Again, the fictional lives of Clarissa, Sophia Western, Honorla, Eliza Barter in Shebbeare's The Marriage Act, Angelica in The Adventures of Captain Greenland, and many other women lead us to believe that avaricious parents in the eighteenth century often considered money more important than a child's happiness, an assertion which non-fictional sources confirm. The marriage of Mary Granville (later Mrs, Delany) to the rich, elderly, drunken rake Mr, Pendarvis exemplifies how in reality a parent's greed could ruin a young girl's life; a commentary on this is Hester Chapone's letter to Richardson condemning the generality of parents, who sought for their

daughters "the goods of fortune only," The fictional lives of Miss Williams in Roderick Random. Polly Gunn in Jack Connor, and Fanny Hill point out that economics, not innate depravity, was usually the cause of prostitution, a judgment with which London's leading magis­ trate, Sir John Fielding, concurs in his Account of the Origins and Effects of a Police (1758), In the novel Charlotte Summers, the Fortunate Parish Girl we learn how parish nurses sometimes brutally mistreated the helpless children in their care; we are told the same sordid details in reports on the parish nurse by House of Commons committees in 1715 and 1767. In fiction, Chetwood's two juvenile protagonists, Jackey and Robert, are abused by their own 231 parents and guardians. They are treated no worse, however, than the non-flctlonal children of Matthew Pilkington, whose own father tried to sell them Into slavery. The adventures of Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Joseph Andrews' Wilson, Billy Booth, Heartfree, Clarissa, Charlotte Summers and Joe Thompson reveal a great deal about the wretched circumstances of life in an English Jail. The accuracy of the novelists' depiction here is confirmed by reports of the House of Commons Select Committee of 1729 and by John Howard's State of the Prisons (1777ff.). both the result of extended investi­ gations into actual prison conditions. Not only do the novelists accurately represent social conditions in the mid-eighteenth century, at least as regards women, children and prisoners? they also reflect contemporary social attitudes in these respects. Every criticism of his society that a novelist makes on behalf of these victims of social injustice can be matched by a similar criticism from a Georgian letter writer, diarist, essayist, Journalist or reformer. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to consider the novelists as being uniformly reliable guides to the whole scope of current opinion. They can be depended on accurate­ ly to reflect contemporary liberal opinion, but they do not express the other, more conservative, point of view held by many in the eighteenth century. For example, at the same time that the bluestockings were advocating woman's right to be treated as a rational human being, to be educated and to use whatever mind she had. 232

Lord Chesterfield was expressing the conservative male's opinion of the female intellect in his letters to his son. He advises young Stanhope that if he wants to ingratiate himself with women, he should pretend admiration for their mental capacities "because "a seeming regard for their under­ standings, a seeming desire of, and deference for their advice together with a seeming confidence in their moral virtues, turns their heads entirely in your favour.11 Women, he says later, "have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics .... He who flatters them most pleases them best; and they are most in love with him who they think is the most in love with them"'*' An article in the Gentleman's Magazine for January 17^1, entitled "Heflections on the Female Sex," agrees with Chesterfield that some women are characterized by love and vanity, but adds ambition and gambling to their predominant passions (XI, 27). Lady Mary Wortley Montagu attests to the prevalence of antipathy toward the intel­ lectual woman in the period when she warns her daughter, the Countess of Bute, that the countess' daughter should "conceal whatever learning she attains, with as much solicitude as she would hide crookedness or lameness; the parade of it can only serve to draw on her the envy, and consequently the most inveterate hatred, of all he and she fools, which will 2 certainly be at least three parts in four of her acquaintance." At times, the same person exhibited contradictory opinions on a given subject. Henry Fielding's novels and most of his 233 periodical writings place him firmly in the literal camp, but he occasionally expresses conservative sentiments. In the Covent Garden Journal, for instance, he objects to giving alms to beggars: “This kind of Bounty is a Crime against the Public. It is assisting in the Continuance and Promotion of A Nusance £sic[]. Our wise Ancestors prohibited it by a Law, which would probably have remained in Force and Use to this Day, had not the Legislature conceived, that after the severe Penalties which have been since inflicted on Beggars, none 3 would have the Boldness to become such." Yet in Tom Jones he defends his hero for giving alms to Anderson, driven by poverty to highway robbery, and ironically criticizes those individuals who "will consider ([Tom's act[] as a want of regard to that justice which every man owes his country"

(III. 29). Richardson shows the same ambivalence. He is unbearably patronizing toward women when he writes to Lady Bradshalgh, "Dear Lady, discourage not the sweet souls from acquiring any learning that may keep them employed and out of mischief."

Such a statement implies no great opinion of the female intellect and seems to put Richardson on the side of Chester­ field and Lady Mary's he and she fools. All of his heroines, however, demonstrate that intellectually women are equal to men, and in many cases even superior to them. The Interminable discussions of the female intellect in Sir Charles Grandlson emphasize that education is necessary for a woman's development as a rational and moral human being, 234 rather than that it keeps her out of mischief. Thus there was still a great deal of lingering con­ servatism in mid-century England to offset the new attitude toward the treatment of the weak and helpless. Not every­ body agreed that life would be better if the poor were given money, the foundling saved from starvation, or the woman allowed to earn her own living. It is to the credit of the first English novelists, however, that notwithstanding their occasional ambivalence as men, in their fiction they are consistently liberal, and the regularity with which they accord sympathy to the abused woman, child or prisoner testifies to their awareness of the need for social change. The novelists' liberalism is further shown by comparing their attitude toward women with that of the bluestockings, the eighteenth-century group that was most advanced in its thinking on the subject of women's rights. On the whole, we find that the novelists were even more radical than were the blues. These women in no sense constituted an organized feminist movement, and the rights they asked for were not revolutionary. While they did not accomplish much for women in general, they did accustom the men in their circle to the notion that in many ways the differences between the sexes were "merely scenical," as Steele had said earlier. This, perhaps, is why they were so successful— they did not ask for so much as to antagonize those who were in the main satisfied with the status quo and they asked only for them­ selves, not for women in general. Their lack of revolu- 235 tionary zeal is understandable: most of the blues were more or less happily married to men who did not try to exercise the eighteenth-century husband’s excessive power. They did recognize the importance of marriage to an eighteenth- century woman, and this led them to strenuously oppose the prevailing barter system, what Steele had earlier called "Bargains to Cohabit," and to insist that affection, not money, was the only rational basis for a happy marriage. They also demanded and received recognition that they had minds which they were capable of developing and using for purposes other than the immemorial ones of household management and the rearing of children. Dr. Johnson told Mrs. Thrale, for instance, that Elizabeth Montagu "diffuses more knowledge, in her conversation, than any woman I know, or, indeed, almost any man." By proving themselves to be rational, Intelligent and witty human beings who could not be overlooked, even in circles that included Dr. Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke and Sir Joshua Reynolds, the blues "won men’s ungrudging respect, and established the right of women to use their minds and charm mankind by their wits."^ The novelists demanded for women the same rights that the blues did. Marriage by barter is condemned in Tom Jones. Clarissa. Sir Charles Grandlson. The Memoirs of a Coxcomb. The Marriage Aot. Peregrine Pickle and Joe Thompson, to name only a few. A woman’s right to be considered an intelligent human being and to have an education is asserted in Pamela. 23 6

Clarissa, Sir Charles Grandlson, Lucy Wellers, The Twins and David Simple. But the novelists also criticized certain social conditions affecting women that the "blues generally ignored. (For confirmation of the novel's accuracy as a reflector of these conditions, we must depend on women like Laetltia Pilkington, rather than on Mrs. Montagu and her circle.) We get from the fictional lives of Mrs. Harlowe, the Lady of Quality, Charlotte Summers' mother, Sophia Western's cousin Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and Mrs. Haywood's Betsy Thoughtless a picture of the tyrannical husband that cannot be found in the correspondence of Hester Chapone or Mrs. Montagu. Only in the early pages of Mrs. Delany's Autobiography. where the author recounts her disastrous marriage to Mr. Pendarvis, do we find a bluestocking confronting the problem of an unhappy wife. Just as the blues were spared the necessity of dealing with dictatorial husbands, they were not required to earn their livings, and it is in the novel that we find the much more extensive evidence of the need for a change in social attitude toward the working girl than we find in non-fictional souroes, Smollett's Lady of Quality becomes a kept woman because there is no other way she can earn a living, and his Monlmia de Zelos is at the mercy of Ferdinand Count Fathom because she has no means of keeping herself alive without him. Charlotte Summers and her mother barely make ends meet by doing needlework, and Charlotte, like Clarissa Harlowe, actually goes to Jail for debt because of her inability to 237 earn money. Miss Fielding's Camilla becomes a beggar at one point, and Lucy Wellers, Mrs. Haywood's Louisa, and Miss Fielding's Cynthia all demonstrate the degradation that is the usual lot of the woman who goes into any form of domestic service. John Shebbeare and Riohardson's ideal man, Sir Charles Grandison, both well aware of the special economic problems of women, recommend the establishment of Protestant nunneries where they could live and support themselves. The bluestockings, for all their reputed radicalism, were models of sexual propriety. Though they might converse freely and on the same intellectual level with men, they conversed in groups, not tete-d-tete, "reinforcing their individual virtue by reciprocal support," as one critic puts 7 It." They ventured a few oblique demands for a single moral standard for men and women, as when Hester Chapone complained to Richardson that "The rules of the world being made by men, are always more severe on women than on them­ selves, insomuch that as you observe, 'perpetrated crimes in a man hurt not his reputation in the world's eye half so 8 effectually as imprudences in a woman,*" but the prosti­ tute 's or the seduced woman's problem was no more theirs than was the mistreated wife's or the working girl's. In the novel, however, we find the double standard treated with great forthrightness in Allworthy's identical lectures on chastity to Jenny Jones and to Tom, in Tom's own lecture to young Nightingale, and in Cleland's Memoirs of a Coxcomb. The novelists also assert in the persons of Polly Gunn, 238

Miss Wilsmore, Eliza Thoroughgood, Smollett's Miss Williams and his Lady of Quality, and Cleland's Fanny Hill, to name but a few, that the fallen woman was often only partially to blame for her plight and that, far from being beyond reclama­ tion, she could often become a useful and respectable member of society. In several ways, then, the early novelists were even more critical of their world's attitude toward women than were the most "advanced" women of the time. It is to the credit of the men among them that their criticism was just as sharp as that of Miss Fielding, Mrs. Haywood or Mrs. Collyer. The novelists' critical purpose is further indicated when we consider the relationship between the novel and the periodical essay. Both are concerned with social betterment, and the essayist often uses fictional techniques, such as narrative and characterization, for his social criticism. He also attacks the same injustices toward women, children and prisoners that the novelists do. (There is great unanimity among Georgian liberals as to what is wrong with their world.) Dr. Johnson's Rambler. for example, contains essays on the deplorable importance of money to the marriage­ able woman (No. 75)» on prostitutes (Nos. 170 and 171) and on mistreated children (No. 1^8). Idler No. 38 is an essay on British Justice, which critioizes excessive punishment for misdemeanors and the rapaciousness of creditors. Rambler No. 1^8 and Idler No. 38 are simple essays; but Rambler No. 75,

r sif on the relationship between money and marriage, and Nos, 170- 171, on prostitutes, are fiction. They are forerunners of what we today know as the magazine short story. Both purport to be letters from young women who recount their experiences and, in so doing, point to certain social attitudes that need changing. The wealthy, beautiful, intelligent, witty and much admired Melissa (Rambler No. 75) writes to tell how she lost her fortune through the "failure of a fund” and found her host of admirers reduced to an elderly parson and a young lieutenant of dragoons. She draws from her experience the obvious moral that, as far as society is concerned, no beauty, intelligence or wit in the marriageable woman can compensate for the loss of money. Nos. 170 and 171 are letters from Misella, the prostitute, recounting the details of her seduction by a wealthy relative and her unsuccessful efforts to support herself and her child after he abandons them. Essays on similar subjects abound in the Tatler. the Spectator. the Gentleman’s Magazine, the Female Spectator, the True Patriot and the Covent-Garden Journal. This use of the embryonic short story for purposes of social criticism was popularized in the early eighteenth century by Addison and Steele with their vignettes dealing with the lives of Sir Roger de Coverley, the Tory squire, and Sir Andrew Freeport, the Whig merchant, and by the middle of the century, the device had become part of the socially critical Journalist’s stock in trade. When, for example, Fielding wishes to criticize avaricious parents who force 2*K) their daughters to marry for money, he prints in the True Patriot for March 17^6 (No. 21) an epistolary short story, supposedly a letter from a sadder-but-wlser father who tells the story of his “little Fanny." Fanny obeys her father and marries the wealthy man he has chosen for her; she is cruelly mistreated by her husband and forbidden to see her repentant father; eventually she elopes with the less affluent former suitor that she has always loved. The Gentleman's Magazine for August l?4l contains a similar "short story" in the form of a letter from the brother of a wealthy tradesman. This correspondent tells how his brother tried to force his daughter to marry a rich fop she did not love, how she escaped on her wedding morning to her uncle and with his help was married to her lover, Mr. Ledger (XI, ^23). The Gentleman's also criticizes false female pride in the story of Flavia and Philautus (XIII, 372-373) and in that of o Victoria. Almost every issue of Mrs. Haywood's Female Spectator contains a didactic short story relating to the special problems of women. Avaricious parents, for example, are criticized in the story of Momyma, and the danger of overprotecting young women is illustrated by the story of Christabella.10 This didactic fiction occurs far more often in essay periodicals, such as The Rambler. The Idler and the Female Spectator, than it does in the periodical miscellany, like the Gentleman's or the True Patriot, but even in the latter it appears frequently enough to Justify saying that the use of realistic short stories for social criticism was widespread in Georgian periodicals. Thus, Richardson and the realistic novelists who followed him found that the periodical essayist had already established a precedent for the use of fiction as social criticism* they also found a reading public accustomed to having its fiction used for such purposes. In addition, some of them, like Fielding and Mrs. Haywood, were themselves periodical writers, as well as novelists. The transformation of the realistic short story into the realistic novel was easily accomplished by adding complica­ tions of plot and by deepening the characterization. The fictional letter to the Gentleman's cited above, in which the wealthy tradesman's brother tells of his niece's escape from her tyrannical father and her taking refuge with her uncle, is a very briefly sketched version of the central conflict of Tom Jones. The lovers are prevented from marry­ ing because Sophia's father has economic reasons for promot­ ing her marriage to Bllfil, and so she runs away and takes refuge with Lady Bellaston. Fielding complicates his story with a myriad of events that serve to delay Tom's and Sophia's marriage, and he draws in great detail the characters of his protagonists as well as those of other people whose actions help or hinder their union. The difference between the two stories lies in the novel's greater expansiveness, which allows the author to develop the character of his hero (we never see the lover, Mr. Ledger, in the Gentleman's story), and also allows him to criticize more than one social abuse. 242

Fielding does this when he uses the first part of Tom Jones to attack his age's treatment of foundlings or uses Anderson the highwayman to point out defects in the poor laws. The periodical essayists' use of the short story for social criticism influences the novelists in other ways also. The novelists often insert in their works the equivalents of these stories, which have only the most peripheral rele­ vance to their protagonists* fortunes. Their chief, purpose seems to "be a criticism of social conditions that could not he made by relying solely on the events that befall the protagonists. If Fielding, for instance, wishes to criticize the excessive power of a husband over a wife's fortune and her person or to show the evils that can result from marrying for money, he cannot very well do so by allowing his Sophia Western to marry Bllfil— unless he intends a novel very different from the one he has written. One way to make this criticism, however, is to have Sophia meet her cousin Mrs. Fitzpatrick and listen to that lady's story of marital misery. The connection between such extraneous material in the novel and periodical fiction becomes clear when the reader realizes that if Mrs. Fitzpatrick's narrative were prefaced by "Dear Sir," "Dear Mr. Urban," or "Dear Madam" and inserted in the Bambler. the Gentleman's Magazine or the Female Spectator, it would be indistinguishable, except in length, from hundreds of other fictional "letters to the editor." A craftsman like Fielding is able to give some sort of 243 thematic relevance to the stories of the Old Man of the Hill and of Mrs. Fitzpatrick (they can be read as parallels to the lives of Tom and Sophia, showing the fate that would have befallen them had they chosen to act other than as they do). But the reader is nonetheless aware that structurally they are intrusions which contribute nothing to the complication of the protagonists1 fortunes or to the resolution of their difficulties. The same can be said of the nearly endless story of the Lady Clementina della Porretta which the reader encounters in the middle of Sir Charles Grandjson. Lady Clementina's story provides one more example of Richardson's all-important critical purpose, the assertion that parents can cause a daughter great unhappiness when they interfere with her choice of the man she will marry. It also has slight structural relevance in that Lady Clementina serves as a minor obstacle that must be overcome before Harriet can marry Sir Charles. As in the incidents of the Old Man of the Hill and Mrs. Fitzpatrick, the author's critical purpose is obvious in Lady Clementina's story, but in all three cases the connection between these incidents and the protagonists' stories is slight enough that the modern reader, accustomed to a tighter thematic or structural unity, is aware of them as intrusions. The eighteenth-century reader does not object to these incidents on structural grounds; he criticizes or praises them for didactic reasons. The more uplifting 11 morally, the better, from his point of view. 2*J4

Minor novelists, less technically proficient than Fielding and Richardson, often Insert in their novels digressive stories with even less relevance than those of Mrs. Fitzpatrick and Lady Clementina. In the History of Lucy Wellers, the author interpolates the stories of Mrs. Mlnter and Mrs. Hope. Both women are chance acquaintances who tell the heroine the stories of their lives. These stories reinforce the author's criticism of contemporary attitudes toward the working woman in that they, like Lucy, were forced to earn their livings at menial and underpaid jobs, but their lives in no way complicate Lucy’s fortunes or contribute to the resolution of her problems. Had they been omitted entirely from the novel, Lucy's story would not be changed, but the repetition of the situation strengthens the author's criticism of society for its treatment of the working woman, and suggests that this criticism is intentional. The same can be said for Chaigneau's account, of Polly Gunn; she enters the story of Jack Connor's life only because the author wants to tell the story of a reformed prostitute and to show his readers that such women should be reclaimed as useful members of society rather than condemned. She has no effect on Jack's fate, and her function in the novel seems purely didactic. Even a first-rate novelist is occasionally so bent upon social criticism that he inserts stories with no other discernible purpose. Leonora, the unfortunate jilt in Joseph Andrews, shows the author's criticism of "that blame- able levity in the education of [her] sex," but her story has neither thematic nor structural relevance to the rest of the novel. Parson Adams happens to be in a stagecoach that passes Leonora's house, an event which reminds a fellow- passenger of the story, which she tells to help while away the time. Not even Smollett's most admiring critics have managed to justify on structural or thematic grounds the inclusion in Peregrine Pickle of the "Memoirs of a Lady of Quality" or the account of the Annesley case, the former delaying the story of Peregrine's adventures for some 50,000 words. But the Memoirs make a trenchant criticism of the legal and economic powerlessness of the eighteenth-century wife, and the Annesley case of the way British Justice could be subverted by the rich and noble at the expense of the poor and lowly. Were either omitted, Peregrine's fortunes would not change, but Smollett's criticism of his world would be weakened proportionately. The structural irrele­ vance of these interpolated stories and the regularity with which they are used to attack social abuses seem to me to indicate that one of the authors' purposes is social criticism. Many of the books which the eighteenth century called novels are really nothing more than collections of short stories of the kind we find in the Female Spectator or the Gentleman's Magazine, and they often have the same critical purpose as the periodical flcti vn. The Memoirs of the Shakespear's Head, in Covent Garden is a series of stories about people whose only connection Is that at one time or another they have entered the Shakespear's Head tavern for some reason. By using this device the author can criticize drunken noblemen who brawl in the streets, the inadequate Dogberrys of the watch, corrupt Justices of the peace and almost any other fault in his world that he wishes. Mrs. Haywood's History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy concerns a young couple who decide to delay their marriage in order to observe all their married acquaintances and to learn how not to act when they become man and wife. Given this purpose, most of the novel is devoted to other people's marital problems; Jemmy and Jenny are merely observant bystanders who provide the Justification for a series of didactic short stories about tyrannical husbands, avari­ cious parents and spoiled-brat wives, all designed to illustrate various social abuses related to marriage. Shebbeare's The Marriage Act is ostensibly the story of Eliza Barter's successful attempt to avoid a marriage with the wealthy, detestable Sir Roger Ramble, but Eliza's adventures comprise a very small part of this novel, which mostly concerns lovers whose lives are ruined by the provisions of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke's act prohibiting minors from marrying without parental consent. Each short story, however, is a separate criticism of the Act. By using this technique, Shebbeare has sacrificed structural unity, but he is able to show the Act's unfortunate conse­ 2k7 quences on the lives of old and young, rich and poor, high and low, in the city or in the country. The title of The History of Honorla. Being the Adventures of a Young Lady. Interspersed with the Histories of Emilia, Julia and Others speaks for Itself. The sole connections between these young ladies are that they have all been immured in the same French convent by tyrannical fathers and that they all share a passion for telling one another of the love affairs that roused parental ire. The author's only purpose is social criticism, "to set forth, and expose the barba­ rous and unnatural Ambition of Parents, in sacrificing their own Offspring to vile Interest." The short stories that comprise Francis Coventry's novel Pompey the Little are connected only by the fact that the protagonist of each story once owned the lap-dog Pompey, which gives the novel its title. Pompey*s owners range in social and economic importance from a titled minister of state to a blind beggar, and Coventry is thus able to criticize many aspects of contemporary life, from elderly prudes to George Whitefield's sermons. Pompey is one of the picaro heroes who come into the early English novel as descendants of the Spaniards,

Lazarlllo de Tormes (153*0 a^d Don Quixote (1605). The picaro's mobility makes him an ideal vehicle for compre­ hensive social satire, since he knows neither geographical nor social limits. As he travels through his world, he 248 meets people of all classes from the highest to the lowest, the best as well as the worst that society can offer. The early English picaro, exemplified by such works as Thomas Nash’s The Unfortunate Traveller (159*0 t Henry Chettle’s Piers Plalnnes Seven Yeres Prentlshlp (1595) Nicholas Breton's Grlmello*s Fortunes (l6o4) or Richard Head’s and Francis Kirkman’s The English Rogue (1665). was usually in the tradition of Lazarillo de Tormes rather than of 12 Don Quixote. The author used him primarily for the telling of a series of bawdy, often downright obscene, short stories of low life, unified only by the character of the picaro himself. Little effort was made to reflect actual conditions for purposes of social criticism. When the English realistic novelists adapt the serious social purpose of the periodical short-story to a picaro tale, however, the result is very close to many eighteenth- century novels in structure and critical intent. No longer is the picaro merely a clever rogue whom we laugh at because he outwits his equally roguish opponents. In the novel he becomes the injured innocent, and the world is shown to be very much at fault for its mistreatment of him. As such, he is more closely related to Don Quixote than to the rogue Lazarillo. The latter survives in Smollett’s Ferdinand Count Fathom, but the author’s purpose is still social criticism, because Fathom’s opponents become injured victims rather than equally 2^9 wicked but less clever rogues. Fathom is the exception, however. Most of the novel’s picaresque heroes are good- hearted victims of the world’s injustice, like David Simple, George Edwards, Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews, Parson Adams, Peregrine Pickle, Roderick Random, Joe Thompson, Jack Connor, Patty Saunders and, to some extent, Harriet Byron. Structural evidence, then, seems to suggest that the early novelists did have a social purpose. The devices that they use to criticize their society, however, are not uniformly sophisticated. In my opinion the picaro is the most skillful device because the author can use his inci­ dents in the picaro tale for social criticism, but at the same time he can also use them to advance the narrative and to reveal or to develop character. (Among the first English novelists, Fielding and Smollett are the undisputed masters of this technique.) The interpolated story and the loosely connected series of short stories are less sophisti­ cated devices. The former is too intrusive, and the latter has no real narrative unity. The novelists’ critical intent is further manifested by the frequency with which they stop the action and draw a moral for their readers. They do this by direct address to the reader from an author speaking either in propria persona or through a reliable character, or they allow their characters to address one another in set speeches. We have seen authorial Intrusion used In its crudest form in Chetwood's The Stepmother, where the author comments on the stepmother's striking young Billyj 11 Inhuman Wretch, to treat a poor Innocent in such a Manner! . . . A Woman sure could never have any Regard for the Father, who could use his child in such an inhuman Manner! My heart aches to think of it.” More sophisticated authors couch their comment in irony. Ghaigneau, who is as upset at the poverty of the Irish as Swift ever was, lets his ironical descrip­ tion of young Jack Connor's attire serve as an oblique criticism of society's treatment of the children of the poor: "His Dress was pretty much the same with young Gentlemen of his Years, or rather with almost all in the Parish. He had something on that resembled Breeches, and a remnant of a Rug very artfully hung over his Shoulders, and fastened round his Waist by Pieces of Wood nicely carv'd, of the Size of a Packer's Needle.— A Shirt was an idle and uncomfortable Ornament; and Shoes and Stockings made Youth too tender and delicate" (I, 27). Fielding makes a high art of ironical comment as social criticism. When he wishes to criticize society's attitude toward the fallen woman, he describes the public reaction to Allworthy's refusal to send Jenny Jones to Bridewell for her supposed fornication: "He had indeed committed no other than an error in politics, by tempering justice with mercy, and by refusing to gratify the good-natured disposition of 251 the mob, with an object for their compassion to work on in the person of poor Jenny, whom, in order to pity, they desired to have seen sacrificed to ruin and infamy by a shameful correction in Bridewell” (I, 35)• Chaigneau and Fielding do not say explicitly that we should do something to help the children of the poor or that people take too harsh an attitude toward a woman’s sexual lapses, but the reader understands the point nevertheless; the criticism is made without seeming intrusive. When the story is an autobiographical first-person narrative, the narrator, functioning as the author’s mouthpiece, draws the moral for the reader. Joe Thompson pauses in his story of the adulterous Mrs. Modish to tell us that covetous and worldly-minded parents can ruin a daughter's chance for marital happiness. On another occasion he tells us that gentle methods will encourage boys to learn sooner than brutal beatings. His sojourn in the Fleet is occupied almost entirely with a series of addresses to the reader, setting out his opinion about the gross miscarriages of Justice that he encounters. Cleland's coxcomb, Sir William, does the same when he pauses to explain to the reader that "even libertinism has its lows of honour,” and that for this reason a man has, at the very least, financial obligations to a woman he has seduced. Often the novelists use set speeches in which reliable characters make their critical point by addressing one 252 another rather than the reader. The result of such a practice can be a very dull novel, especially when the author allows his desire to criticize to outweigh his sense of the dramatic. This is the trouble, of course, with three-quarters of Pamela. Once Squire B's melo­ dramatic pursuit of the heroine has ended at the altar, the characters settle down to literally hundreds of pages of talk; they talk about degree, about the education of children, about the advantages and disadvantages of a hired wet nurse, about marital Infidelity, etc., etc., etc. There is almost no action; the characters simply talk to one another and in the process criticize the social condi­ tions and attitudes in their world that need changing. The same criticism can be made of Mrs. Collyer's Felicia to Charlotte. Once Felicia and Lucius are married, their lives are almost devoid of incident, but they talk as tediously as do Pamela and her circle, about very much the same subjects and with the same critical purpose. Richardson's Sir Charles Grandjson is one long tea-table gossip on female equality, the education of women and the relationship between husband and wife, interspersed with as little action as possible. But from all of these words there emerge definite statements of what is wrong with the world and suggestions for improving it. In Charlotte Summers the reader finds Lady Bountiful and her physician arranged tete-&-tete, discussing in detail 253 the workings of the poor laws, the collection of rates, and the manner of their disbursement. The discussion does nothing to advance the narrative and little to reveal character, but it does point out how the poor laws need to be changed. In Fielding's Amelia. Billy Booth and Mr. Robinson are standing in the middle of the Bridewell. In the background are a Gibraltar veteran falsely accused of theft, but, even after his acquittal, still held for payment of his fees, a young girl who may be hanged for stealing bread for her dying father, and a perjurer who is about to be released. Booth remarks on the inconsistency of English Justice as proven by these cases, thus giving occasion for an abusive lecture by Robinson on the workings of the legal system. And every reader remembers the set speeches by Parson Adams, Allworthy and Dr. Harrison on subjects ranging from chastity to the superiority of works over grace. On each such occasion, the action stops while characters address the reader or one another and express their criticisms of their world. When a character comments in these early novels, there is no post-Jamesian ambiguity as to his moral nature on the one hand and the sincerity and bearing of his opinions on the other. There is a direct and unmis­ takable relationship between character and opinion: good cleaves to good, bad to bad. Dr. Harrison, Amelia and Billy Booth are the spokesmen for right in Amelia, for 254 instance, and though Booth’s own behavior is not always a reliable guide to approved action (as when he spends the night in Bridewell with Miss Matthews), he never tries to justify his behavior in his speeches. He knows what right is, and he expresses it whenever the occasion arises, but his flesh is weak# The same can be said for Tom Jones and Peregrine Pickle, In Shebbeare's The Marriage Act the good and the bad people consistently take appropriate sides on the matter of commercial marriages, just as they do in Tom Jones, Clarissa or Sir Charles Grandlson. James Barter, the heroine’s father, is bad and he believes in marriage for money, as do his wife and elder daughter and the aristocratic Lord Wormeaten. Barter’s younger daughter Eliza and the family of the Reverend Thoroughgood believe in marriage for love. In Tom Jones, Allworthy and Mrs. Deborah Wilkins, good and bad characters respectively, express the appropriate reactions toward the helpless foundling child, as do Lady Bountiful and Lady Squeamish in Charlotte Summers. The good people in novels always believe, too, that the education of children should be furthered by gentle methods? they either demonstrate this by their actions, as do Lord and Lady Truegood in Jack Connor, or they express their beliefs in set speeches, as do Lucius and Felicia in Felicia to Charlotte, Pamela and Joe Thompson. Good people in the novels, like Dr. Harrison, Booth, Wilson, Roderick Random, Peregrine 255 Pickle, Joe Thompson and the Lady of Quality also believe in helping relieve the misery of the imprisoned. At this point we confront a problem in cause and effect. Are certain social attitudes given the authorial stamp of approval because they are uttered by good people? Or, conversely, do the attitudes serve to characterize the people as good? In many cases it is almost impossible to decide, but sometimes a character’s name Indicates his moral nature before anything is known of his social senti­ ments. We know immediately, for Instance, that any charac­ ter named Prudilla, Lady Squeamish or Thwackum is going to be bad, just as we know that Allworthy, Trueworth and Lady Bountiful are going to be good. In these cases the charac­ ters' names indicate that we are to approve of their opinions. At other times a character's actions can serve as an overt clue to his moral nature. Upon first acquaint­ ance, it is difficult to decide whether Smollett's Lady of Quality is or is not meant to have the reader's whole­ hearted approval, but as her story progresses and the reader watches her come to the aid of a destitute widow with new-born twins or save the imprisoned Peregrine Pickle from starvation, his sympathies gradually swing to her side and he realizes that she can be trusted as a reliable commentator as she criticizes the treatment of eighteenth- century wives by tyrannical husbands. When such clues are lacking, the character's social sympathies (or lack thereof) function in place of other indications to guide the reader 256 to a proper assessment of his moral nature. Lady Bountiful1s physician in Charlotte Summers is a neutral character toward whom the reader has no reaction until he explains to Lady Bountiful the workings of the poor laws and points out the need for reform. Prom this point on, the reader is assured that the physician is a good man. In these early novels, the relationship between a character's morality and his social conscience is so consistent and so clear that no reader can fail to grasp the point that goodness and a belief in social reform are inseparable. Nor can he doubt the author's critical purpose. This conscious critical attitude toward specific social abuses is one distinguishing mark of the new post- Pamela novel. Recognition of this fact helps us to under­ stand the relationship of the new novel to previous and succeeding eighteenth-century fiction and to define and clarify the course the novel took in the period. Before 17*1-0, the major eighteenth-century fiction writers were Swift and Defoe. Swift was not a novelist any more than Bunyan was; no reader of Gulliver's Travels would mistake his Lilliputians for the inhabitants of a real world. Like the novelists, he is critical of his world, and he uses the Lilliputians to satirize contemporary politics, religion and pretensions to reason, but he seldom descends to a level where he can deal with the mundane affairs of 2 57 the man in the street. From Gulliver we get no notion of the actual problems faced by a woman who has to work for a living, by a foundling child boarded with a parish nurse, or by a debtor too poor to lodge anywhere except on the common side of the Marshalsea. Defoe is a different case, and as far as I am concerned, he is a novelist, despite the critical disagreement on 13 the subject. Moll Flanders, Roxanna and Colonel Jacque concern themselves very much with the real world in which normal human beings live, and no one reading them can fall to be aware of social abuses in that world. Roxanna and Moll both become prostitutes, and Moll even becomes a criminal, because they are women and have no legal or moral means of earning their livings. Moll is a weaker- willed Pamela, seduced by her employer's son. She and Colonel Jacque are both orphans. The latter forages for his food in the London gutters, steals when he gets the opportunity, and sleeps in the streets. The story of his childhood is as pathetic as that of many a foundling in the new novel. Like so many later protagonists, Moll and Roxanna both go to prison, and Defoe treats their misfortunes with the same sympathy that his post-Richard- sonian successors show for their heroes and heroines. His technique is more sophisticated than that of many later novelists. He uses the picaro for critical purposes in all three novels, and he allows his characters to comment 258 on the evils of their world, but he avoids the extremely awkward and intrusive interpolated story that was later to be so popular in other novels. Defoe is an anomaly, however, and it was to be nearly twenty years before other English fiction writers repeated what he did. The prevailing forms of popular fiction written by his contemporaries were the scandalous roman & clef and the romance. The former is a combination of fact, fiction and scurrility which introduces public figures under easily penetrated pseudonyms. The typical romance is a long, complicated, melodramatic and loosely organized tale of heroic conflicts between love and honor, like Mrs. Haywood's Idalia: Or, The Unfortunate Mistress (1?23), whose heroine is the daughter of a Venetian grandee, courted by Dukes, fought over by Lords, captured by pirates, ship­ wrecked, involved in a triangular love affair and nearly poisoned by a Jealous wife. The point to note about this kind of fiction is that, like Swift's, it has no immediate relevance to the lives of the average man and woman. It tells us nothing about the problems of the girl who has to work for a living or the man who is dying of smallpox in an unsanitary and overcrowded debtors' prison. After Pamela, however, English fiction concerns itself more and more with the actual social prob­ lems which everyday people have to deal with, though some of the old trends survive into the new novel. 259 The direction that the novel takes can be epitomized by Mrs. Haywood's works. In 1723 she published Idalla, a story of high life, Venetian aristocrats and improbable adventures. The Fortunate Foundlings; Being the Genuine History of Colonel M rs and his Sister Madame Du F y, the Issue of the Hon. Ch---es M— rs, Son of the Late Duke of R— -l---d appeared in 17^. The title shows the lingering influence of the roman & clef and many of the heroine's adventures remind one of the wildly unlikely events that befell the Venetian Idalia in 1723. But the fortunate foundling Louisa confronts a very real problems where does a woman with no training get a job in eighteenth- century London? Her later novel, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751). is realistic, with no intrusions from the world of romance; it concerns itself with the domestic problems of a woman whose life is made nearly unbearable by a combination of a tyrannical husband with inordinate powers and inequitable divorce laws. Betsy Thoughtless confines itself exclusively to specific abuses of the real world and to particular laws and social attitudes that need changing. When the Venetian lady Idalia becomes Mrs. Betsy Thoughtless Munden of London, the English novel has developed into a potent force for social criti­ cism. By accurately reflecting the social conditions of their often brutal times, the first novelists demand 260

sympathy for the weak and oppressed and appeal to the growing sensibility of their age. Sometimes we are obvious­ ly supposed to cry— and for good reason— as we do over Clarissa, dying alone in the bailiff*s attic, or over the orphaned Charlotte Summers, kissing Lady Bountiful*s hand in submissive gratitude, while tears trickle down her little face. But in these early novels our pity is elicited for practical ends. Our sympathies are aroused in order to make us realize that oppressive social conditions or social attitudes need changing. In the next generation of the novel, however, tears come to be valued for their own sake, rather than as a sign of an awakened social conscience. Here Sterne asks us to cry over Lieutenant LeFevre because he is dying or over Yorick's poor Maria because she is mad.

Both characters are, indeed, pathetic, but despite any sympathy the reader may feel toward their problems, he can do nothing more for them than indulge his grief. In the earlier novels we are seldom asked to shed tears merely as an exercise in excessive sensibility. The not unnatural result of this shift in sensibility is that readers are expected to cry over increasingly trivial misfortunes. The depths of sentimentality are reached in Henry Mackenzie's Man of Feeling (1771), where the reader is asked to sympa­ thize with a grown man who weeps because he must leave his old aunt for a few weeks' Journey to London. Although the second generation of novelists some- 26l times carried their sentimentality to excessive lengths, most of them continued, as their predecessors had done, to treat with sympathy and tenderness the victims of real social oppression, Mackenzie may demand tears for trivia with Harley and his old aunt, hut he also demands them for Miss Emily Atkins, a prostitute through economic necessity? for the orphaned and impoverished grandchildren of Harley*s friend Old Edwards; and for an imprisoned debtor whose rapacious creditor has designs on the debtor's wife. So with Goldsmith in The Vicar of Wakefield. His characters sometimes cry too easily, and he expects a similar reaction from his readers, but much of his novel is devoted to a bitter criticism of the enclosure acts, to a sympathetic defense of Olivia Primrose, the fallen woman, and to the grim conditions of the prison in which her father is incarcerated for debt. The English novel never completely abandons its grasp of actual social conditions and its critical attitude toward those conditions.

Traditionally, we think of the years from the 1830's through the 1850's as producing the great English novels of social criticism, especially those dealing with women, children, and prison conditions, and there is certainly ample justification for this belief. No novel creates more sympathy for the mistreated child than do Oliver Twist. Dombey and Son. Bleak House and Nicholas Nlckleby: none is more critical of prison conditions than Little Dorrlt. Great Expectations and David Copperfield. The problems 262 of woman, be she seduced woman, prostitute, working girl, abused wife or daughter of avaricious parents, are treated with great compassion and humanitarianism in Vanity Fair, Ruth, Jane gyre, Dombey and Son, Mlddlemarch. Adam Bede, Nicholas Nlckleby. Oliver Twist and many others. But it was the eighteenth century that began what the nineteenth century brought to fruition. As one critic has said, ''the Benthamite reformer of the nineteenth century did not build on vacant ground . . . but found the land dotted 1^ with schools, hospitals, prisons, and other institutions. Neither, I must add, did the Victorian novelists build on vacant ground. In their concern for the weak and helpless, they are descendants of Fielding, Richardson, Smollett and many lesser talents among the first generation of realistic novelists. 263

NOTES

■^Chesterfield, Letters, I V, 1^70 and 1353-135^*

2Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Letters and Works, ed. Whamcliffe, II, 226.

^Fielding, Covent~Garden Journal, II, 10.

^Quoted in Homer, The English Women Novelists, pp. 35-36.

Roswell's Life of Johnson, IV, 275» note 3*

^Johnson, ed., Bluestocking Letters, p. 7.

Rris Barry, ed., Introduction to Pilkington, Memoirs, p. 2^. 8 Chapone, Posthumous Works, II, 115-116.

^Gentleman's Magazine, XXI (l75l)t 255-257. Vic­ toria's story is a reprint of Rambler No. 130.

1Respectively IV, 83-95 and I, 223-236.

1 1 The Gentleman's Magazine, for instance, praised Roderick Random for depicting "the misery attendant upon vice" (XIX [l7^9]t 126). In Chapter II of Blanchard’s Fielding the Novelist, which discusses the critical reception of Tom Jones, the majority of commentators in the 17^0’s praise or condemn the novel on moral grounds.

12Frank Wadleigh Chandler, The Literature of Roguery, 2 vols. (Boston and New York, 1907). PP. 2- 5- 2 64

•^Defoe is a novelist according to Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (London, 1925). PP* 121-131; E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (New York, 1927). PP* 87- 95; and Dorothy Van Ghent, The English Novel: Form and Function (Reprinted New York, 1955)» PP* 33“/+3* He is not a novelist according to F. R. Leavis, The Great Tradition (London, 19^8), p. 2, note 2; and Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, pp. 93-13^*

F. J. Klingberg, "The Evolution of the Humanitarian Spirit in Eighteenth-Century England," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXVI (19^2), 263. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF NOVELS USED IN THIS STUDY

The Adventures of Cant. Greenland. Written In Imitation of All Those Wise. Learned. Witty and Humourous Authors, Who either Already Have, or Hereafter. May Write In the Same Stile and Manner. vols. London, 1752.

The Adventures of a Kidnapped Orphan. London, 17^7 • Chaigneau, William. The History of Jack Connor. 2nd ed. 2 vols. London, 1753* [First published 1752.] Chetwood, William Rufus. "The Step-Mother: or, Good Luck at Last," Six Historical Relations. Dublin, 1755* [First published 1741.] ______. "The Twins: or, the Female Traveler," Six Historical Relations. Dublin, 1755* [First pub- lished 17^1.] ______. "The Unnatural Uncle; or Repentant Villain," Six Historical Relations. Dublin, 1755* [First published 17^1•]

______. "The Virgin Widow," Six Historical Relations. Dublin, 1755. [First published 17^1.]

Cleland, John. Memoirs of a Coxcomb. New York, 1963* [First published 1751•] ______. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, ed. Peter Quenneil". New York, 1963* [First published 1748- 17^9-] Collyer, Mary Mitchell. Felicia to Charlotte; Being Letters from a Young Lady in the Country to Her Friend liT Town. 2 vols. London, 1749.

265 266

Coventry, Francis. History of Pompey the Little; or the Life and. Adventures of a Lap-DogI London, 1&20. ^First published 17510

Fielding, Henry. Amelia, ed. W. E. Henley. ~2 vols. New York, 1902. [First published 1751*3

______. The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams. Written in Imitation of Cervantes. Author of "Don Quixote.11 ed. W. E. Henley. New York, 1902. [First published 1742.3 . The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great, ed. W. E. Henley. New York, 1902. [First published 1743*3

______. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, ed. W. E. Henley. 3 vol's. New York, 1902. [First published 1749*3 Fielding, Sarah. The Adventures of David Simple; talnlng an Account of His Travels through the CfEles of London and Westminster, In Search of a Real Friend. 2 vols. London, 1744.

______. Familiar Letters between the Principal Characters in David Simple and Some Others. To Which Is Added. A Vision. By the Author of David Simple. 2 vols. London, 174-4.

Haywood, Eliza. The Fortunate Foundlings: Being the Genuine History of Colonel M rs. and His Sister. Madam du P»-y, the Issue of the Hon. Ch— -s M~--rs. Son of the Late Duke of R-— 1— -'-d. London, 1744.

. The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy. London, 1785* [First published 1753*3 ______. The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless. London, 1784. [First published 1751-J

Hill, Sir John. The Adventyes of Mr. George Edwards, a Creole. London, 1788. [2nd ed. published 1751•3

______... The Adventures of Mr. Lovelll, Interspers'd wlfh Many Beal' Amours of the Modern Polite World. 2nd ed. 2 vols. London, 1750. 267

The History of Charlotte Summers, the Fortunate Parish Girl. 2 vols. London, 1749« The History of Honoria. Being the Adventures of a Young Lady. Interspersed with the Histories of Emilia. Julia, and Others. By a Young Gentleman. London, 1754. The History of Lucy Wellers. 2 vols. London, 1753*

The History of Sophia Shakespear. London, 1753* Kimber, Edward. The Life and Adventures of Joe Thompson: a Narrative Founded on Fact. London, 178 3. [First published 1750.] - The Life of Patty Saunders. Written by Herself. London, ~ 1752: Memoirs of the Shakespear1s-Head in Covent-Garden: in Which Are Introduced Many Entertaining Adventures. and Several Remarkable Characters. By the Ghost of Shakespear. 2 vols. London, 1755*

Mozeen, Thomas. Young Scarron. London, 1752.

Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady. Comprehending the Most Important Concerns of Private Life and Particularly Shewing, the Distresses That May Attend the Misconduct Both of PARENTS and CHILDREN, in Relation to MARRIAGE. & vols. Oxford, 1930. [First published 1747- 1748.]

______. The History of Sir Charles Grandlson: in a SERIES OF LETTERS Published from the ORIGINALS by the Editor of PAMELA and CLARISSA. 6 vols. Oxford, 1929-1931. [First published 1753-1754.] ______. Pamela: or. Virtue Rewarded. In a Series of Familiar Letters from a Beautiful Young Damsel to Her Parents: Afterwards in Her Exalted Condition. between Her, and Persons of Figure and Quality. upon the Most Important and Entertaining Subjects. in Genteel LlfeT k vols. Oxford, 1929* [First published 1740-1741.] 268

Scott, Sarah Robinson. The History of Cornelia. London, 1750. Shebbeare, John. The Marriage Act. A Novel. Contain­ ing a Series of Interesting Adventures. 2 vols. London, 175^*

Smollett, Tobias. The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom. 2 volsT Oxford, 1925* [First published 1753-] _ . The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, in Which Are Included Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, edited with an Introduction by James L. Clifford. London, 196^. [First published 1751*3

_ . The Adventures of Roderick Random. 2 vols. Oxford, 1925-1926. [First published 17^8.3 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CONSULTED

Allemann, Gellert Spencer. Matrimonial Law and the Materials of Restoration Comedy. Wallingford, Pennsylvania, 19^2. Allen, Walter. The English Novel. New York, 195^* Altlck, Richard D. The Eftglish Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1500-1900. Chicago, 1957* Baker, Ernest A. History of the English Novel. 10 vols. London, 192^-1939* Battestin, Martin C. The Moral Basis of Fielding's Art: A Study of Joseph Andrews.” Middletown, Connecticut, 1959. Bayne-Powell, Rosamond. The English Child In the Eighteenth Century. New York, 1939* ______. Travellers in Eighteenth-Century England. London, 1951* Becker, Carl L. The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth- Century Philosophers. New Haven, 1932. Blackstone, Sir William. Commentaries on the Laws of England. 12th ed. ^ vols. Dublin, 179^* Blanchard, Frederic T. Fielding the Novelist; A Study in Historical Criticism. New Haven, 1927* Blease, W. L. The Emancipation of English Women. London, 1910. Block, Andrew. The English Novel, 17^0-1850: A Cata­ logue. 2nd ed. London, 1961.

269 270

Boswell, James. Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. George B. Hill and L. F. Powell. 6" vols. Oxford, 1934- 1964. Brownlow, John. The History and Objects of the Foundling Hospital, with a Memoir of the Founder. 3rd ed. London, 1665. Bruce, Donald. Radical Doctor Smollett. London, 1964. The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, ed. F. W Bateson. vols. Cambridge and New York, 1941- 1957- Carlson, Carl Lennart. The First Magazine. Providence, Rhode Island, 1938* Carter, Elizabeth. A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot, from the Year 1741 to 1770. To Which Are Added Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Vesey, between" the Years 1763 and 17&7; Published from the Original Manuscripts in the Possession of the Rev. Montagu Pennington, M. A. Vicar of Northbourn in Kent, Her Nephew and Executor. 4 vols. London, 1809. Caulfield, Ernest. The Infant Welfare Movement in the Eighteenth Century. New York, 1939* Chandler, Frank Wadleigh. The Literature of Roguery. 2 vols. Boston and New York, 1907.

Chapone, Hester. The Posthumous Works of Mrs. Chapone. Containing Her Correspondence with Mr. Richardson; ""a Series of Letters to Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, and Some Fugitive Pieces, Never Before Published. Together with an Account of Her Life and Character, Drawn Up by Her Own Family. 2 volsT London', 1807. Chesterfield, Lord. The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope 4th Earl of Chesterfield, ed. Bonamy Dobree. 6 vols. London and New York, 1932. Climenson, Emily J. Elizabeth Montagu, the Queen of the Bluestockings, Her Correspondence from 1720-1761. 2 vols. London, 1906. 2?1

Cobbett, William. Cobbett1s Parliamentary History of England from the Norman Conquest, in 10&6, to *the Year 1&03~ 36 vols. London, lB06-l&20. Collingwood, Peter J. ’'Prison Visitation in the Methodist Revival,” London Quarterly and Holborn Review. clxxx (1955). 285-292. Collins, Arthur S. Authorship in the Days of Johnson. London, 1927* ______. The Profession of Letters; a Study of the Relation of Author to Patron. Publisher, and Public, 1780-1832. London, 1928.

Coveney, Peter. Poor Monkey: The Child in Literature. London, 1957*

Cross, Wilbur. The History of Henry Fielding. 3 vols. New Haven, 19lS. Daiches, David. Literature and Society. London, 1938. Defoe, Daniel. An Essay Upon Projects. London, Paris, Melbourne, 1&94. Delany, Mary Granville. The Autobiography and Corres­ pondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany: with Interesting Reminiscences of King George the Third and Queen Charlotte, ed. Lady Llanover. 3 vols. London, 1 S6I. DeSaussure, Cesar. A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I and II. translated and edited by Madame Van Muyden. London, 1902.

Dodd, William. An Account of the Rise, Progress, and Present State of the Magdalen Hospital, for the Reception of Penitent Prostitutes. Together with Dr. Dodd's Sermons Preached before the President. Vice-Presidents. Governors. &c. Before His Royal Hlgfaaiess the Duke of York, &c. and in the Magdalen Chapel. . . . To Which Are Added The Advice to the Magdalens; with the Psalms. Hymns. Prayers, Rules. List of Subscribers; and an Abstract of the Act for Establishing the Charity. 4-th ed. London, 1770. 272

Dudden, F. Homes. Henry Fielding; His Life. Works. and Times. 2 vols. Oxford, 1952. An Eighteenth-Century Correspondence, Being the Letters of Deane Swift— Pitt— the Lytteltons and the Grenvilles — Lord Daore— Robert Nugent— Charles Jenkinson— the Earls of Guilford. Coventry. & Hardwioke— Sir Edward Turner— Mr. Talbot of Lacock, and Others to Sanderson Miller, Esq. of Radway, eds. Lilian Dickins and Mary Stanton. London, 1910. An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex. In Which Are Inserted the Characters of a Pedant, a Squire, a Beau, a Vertuoso, a Poetaster, a City-Critlck. &c. In a Letter to a Lady. Written by a Lady. London, T696. ! Fielding, Henry. The Covent-Garden Journal, ed. Gerard Edward Jensen”! 2 vols. New York, 19^4. {"First published 1915*] ______. The True Patriot, ed. Miriam A. Locke. University, Alabama, 196^. Fitzgerald, Percy H. The Life of Mrs. Catherine Clive [1711-1785], with an Account of Her Adventures on and off the Stage . . . Together with Her Corres­ pondence'! London, 1883.

Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. New York, 1927* Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. New York"! 1966".

The Gentlemans Magazine. George, Mary Dorothy. England in Johnson's Day. London, 1928. ______. England in Transition. 2nd ed. London, 1953* ______. English Social Life in the Eighteenth Century. London and New York, 1923* ______. London Life in the XVIIIth Century. London, 1951* [First published 1925*] 273

Gordon, Strathearn, and Cocks, T. G. B. A People's Conscience: Six Typical Enquiries (1729-1837/ by Select Committees of the House of Commons. London, 1952. Gray, B. Kirkman. A History of English Philanthropy from the Dissolution of the Monasteries to the Taking of the First Census. London, 1905* Gray, Thomas. The Correspondence of Thomas Gray, ed. Paget Toynbee and Leonard Whitley. 3 vols. Oxford, 1933. Greenwood, Alice. Horace Walpole's World. London, 1913- Halifax, Marquis of. The Complete Works of George Savlle, First Marquess of Halifax, edited with an Introduction by Walter Raleigh. Oxford, 1912. Guerard, Albert Leon. Literature and Society. Boston, 1935. Hanway, Jonas. Thoughts on the Plan for a Magdalen- House for Repentant Prostitutes, with the Several Reasons for Such an Establishment; the Custom of of Other Nations with Regard to Such Penitents; and the Great Advantages Which Must Necessarily Arise from the Good Conduct of This Institution, upon Political and Religious Principles. 2nd ed. London, 1759• Haywood, Eliza. The Female Spectator, 4 vols. London, 1766.

Hazlitt, William. The Complete Works, ed. P. P. Howe. 21 vols. London and Toronto, 1930-1934. Headicar, Bertie Mason, and Puller, C. A London Bibliography of the Social Sciences" 4 vols. and supplements. London, 1931-

Hervey, Lord. Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second. from the Accession to the Death of Queen Caroline, ed. John Wilson Croker. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1848. 274

Hill, Christopher. "Clarissa Harlowe and Her Times,” Essays in Criticism. V (1955), 315-340. Historical Manuscripts Commission. Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont. Diary of the First Earl of Egmont (Viscount Pereival)-. 3 vols. London, 1923. Horner, Joyce M. “The English Women Novelists and Their Connection with the Feminist Movement (1688-1797)♦” Smith College Studies in Modern Language, XI (October, 1929; January and April, 1930). Hough, Graham. "From 'An Essay on Criticism,"' Critical Quarterly. VIII (Summer, 1966), 136-145. Howard, Derek Lionel. The English Prisons: Their Past and Their Future. London, i960. ______. John Howard; Prison Reformer. London, 1958. Humphreys, A. R. The Augustan World. London, 1954. ______. "The 'Rights of Woman' in the Age of Reason," MLR XLI (1946), 256-269. Hutchins, John H. Jonas Hanway, 1712-1786. London, 1940. Jenyns, Soame. Miscellaneous Pieces in Verse and Prose. 3rd ed. London, 1770. Johnson, R. Brimley. Bluestocking Letters. London, 1926.

Johnson, Samuel. The Complete Works. 16 vols. Troy, New York, 1903* Jones, Benjamin M. Henry Fielding as Novelist and Magistrate. London, 1933* Jones, M. G. The Charity School Movement: A Study of Eighteenth Century Puritanism in Action. Hamden, Connecticut^ 1964. [First published 1938.]

Kltchin, Shepherd Braithwhlte. A History of Divorce. London, 1912. 275

Klingberg, Prank J. "The Evolution of the Humanitarian Spirit in Eighteenth-Century England," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. LXVI (19^2), 260-278. Langdon-Davies, John. A Short History of Women. London, 1928.

Leavis, F. R. The Great Tradition. London, 19^8. Leavis, Q. D. Fiction and the Reading Public. London, 1932. Lecky, William E. H. A History of England in the Eighteenth Century. 8 vols. New York, 1862-I89O. Leslie-Melville, R. The Life and Work of Sir John Fielding. London, 193^-• Lewis, V/. S., and Williams, R. M. Private Charity in England, 17^7-1757. New Haven, 1938.

______. Three Tours through London in the Years 17^8, 1776. 1797. New Haven, 19*14. The London Magazine. Lovejoy, A. 0. The Great Chain of Being. New York, i960. [First published 1936. Luxborough, Lady. Letters Written by the Late Right Honourable Lady Luxborough. to William Shenstone, Esq. London, 1775* McCarthy, Mary. "The Fact in Fiction," Partisan Review. T xxvii (i960), 2+38-^5 8. McKillop, Alan D. Early Masters of English Fiction. Lawrence, Kansas, 1956. . Samuel Richardson, Printer and Novelist. Chapel Hill, 1936. Marshall, Dorothy. The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century; A Study in Social and Administrative History^ London, 1926. 276

Mayo, Robert D. The English Novel In the Magazines, l?40-l8i5. with a Catalogue of 1375 Magazine Novels and Novelettes^ London, 1962. Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. Robert Halsband. 3 vols. Oxford, 1966-1967. ______. The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. Lord Wharncliffe. 3rd ed. 2 vols. London, 1866. Monthly Review; or, New Literary Journal. Moore, Robert E. Hogarth's Literary Relationships. Minneapolis, 1948. More, Hannah. The Works of Hannah More. 11 vols. London, 1853* O'Malley, Ida Beatrice. Women in Subjection: A Stud.v of the Lives of English Women Before 1832. London, 1933* Owen, David Edward. English Philanthropy; 1660-1960. Cambridge, Massachusetts^ 1964. Pargellis, Stanley M., and Medley, D. J. Bibliography of British History; the Eighteenth Century, I7l4- T 7 W . Oxford, 1951- Paulson, Ronald. "Satire in the Early Novels of Smollett," JEGP, LIX (I960), 381-402. Phillips, M., and Tomkinson, w. S. English Women in Life and Letters. London and New York, 1926. * Pilkington, Letitia Van Lewen. Memoirs of Mrs. Letitla Pllkington, 1712-1750. Written by Herself. Intro- duction by Iris Barry. New York, 1928. Plant, Marjorie. The English Book Trade. London, 1939* Plomer, H. R., Bushnell, G. H., and Dix, E. R. McC. A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers Who Were at Work in England. Scotland and Ireland from 1726 to 1775. Oxford, 1932. 277

Proper, Coenraad Bart Anne. Social Elements In English Prose Fiction between 1700 and 1&32~ Amsterdam, 1929. Pugh, John. Remarkable Occurrences In the Life of Jonas Hanway, Esq. Comprehending an Abstract of Such Parts of His Travels In Russia, and Persia. As Are the Most Interesting; a Short History of the Rise and Progress of the Charitable and Political Institutions Founded or Supported by Him; Several Anecdotes, and an Attempt to Delineate His Character. London, 1787*

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______. Illustrated English Social History. 4 vols. London, New York and Toronto, 1949-1952. Turbervllle, A. S. English Men and Manners in the Eighteenth Century. Oxford, 1926. ______. Johnson1s England. 2 vols. Oxford, 1933* Utter, Robert Palfrey, and Needham, Gwendolyn Bridges. Pamela1s Daughters. New York, 1936. Van Ghent, Dorothy. The English Novel: Form and Function. New York, 1955* [First published 1953-] Wallas, Ada. Before the Blue Stockings. London, 1929* 279

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