1692: a watershed year

Back when I initially conceived this blog, lo these many years ago, my first thought was a general look at the English novel from about the 1740s, at which time “the novel” was a firmly established facet of everyday life: Fielding vs Richardson was the start I had in mind.

But my brain being what it is, I then started pondering how exactly things had got to the point where a nine-volume epistolary novel with a middle-class female protagonist could be the most popular fictional work of its day. And perhaps even more pertinently, where did Pamela come from?

Gradually, therefore, my plans slid backwards to Daniel Defoe. At that time, I wasn’t as hostile to the mainstream scholarly view of Defoe as “the father of the English novel” as I am now; but even so, the fundamental question remained: how did Defoe become Defoe? Even then, I had no time for the suggestion that the English novel “began” with Defoe: someone must have been before him.

The year 1700 then seemed like a reasonable starting-point, nice and clean—until one day when I was browsing at my academic library to see exactly what had been happening with the novel around that time, and my eye was caught by a modern reissue of a novel first published in 1692: a work highlighting that year as a critical point in the development of English fiction. THIS, I thought, was a much more conceptually valid place to start.

And for quite a while there, 1692 was my choice. I began reading and researching around that date—only to come to the conclusion that there was one earlier work in particular that demanded a full analysis.

So my next stop was 1684’s Love Letters Between A Nobleman And His Sister…and though I don’t believe in ur-works, if I had to nominate one work as the English ur-novel, this would be it.

But of course, it too had influences…

As some of you might recall – anyone? – my first significant posts at this blog dealt with the still-ongoing controversy over the authorship of the Lettres Portugaises – The Love-Letters Of A Portuguese Nun – which were first published in 1669 and first translated into English in 1678. These putatively real letters triggered in England a passion for published correspondence, real or otherwise, and were a huge influence upon Aphra Behn in crafting a new sort of fiction that would later become known as the epistolary novel.

The other aspect of the Lettres Portugaises that made them so attractive is what they were not – not the other dominant form of English writing at the time – not an example of the so-called “rogue’s biography”: which is another way of saying that I desperately did not want to deal with Richard Head’s The English Rogue.

But you don’t think my brain was going to let me get away with such pusillanimity, do you?

So my blog’s actual ground-zero turned out to be 1665: a mere 80 years earlier than I first anticipated.

It’s since taken me over a decade to struggle back to what, in spite of all this, I originally recognised as a legitimate starting-point for a study of the English novel, and an enlightening journey it has been, albeit a very strange one taken via a path strewn with obstacles and detours.

We made it, my dudes.

 

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    Aurelian was growing a little too loud with his Admiration, had she not just then interrupted him, by clapping on her Masque, and telling him they should be observed, if he proceeded in his Extravagance; and withal, that his Passion was too suddain to be real, and too violent to be lasting. He replied, Indeed it might not be very lasting, (with a submissive mournful Voice) but it would continue during his Life. That it was suddain, he denied, for she had raised it by degrees from his first sight of her, by a continued discovery of Charms, in her Mien and Conversation, till she thought fit to set Fire to the Train she had laid, by the Lightning of her Face; and then he could not help it, if he were blown up.
    He begg’d her to believe the Sincerity of his Passion, at least to enjoin him something, which might tend to the Convincing of her Incredulity. She said, she should find a time to make some Trials of him; but for the first, she charged him not to follow or observe her, after the Dissolution of the Assembly. He promised to obey, and entreated her to tell him but her Name, that he might have Recourse to that in his Affliction for her Absence, if he were able to survive it. She desired him to live by all means; and if he must have a Name to play with, to call her Incognita, till he were better informed…

 

 

 

 

Born in 1670, William Congreve started out studying for the bar, and would later have a minor political career with the Whigs; but he was always drawn to the world of literature. He became a disciple of John Dryden, and through him was introduced to the London coffee-house circuit where men of letters gathered to discuss each other’s work.

Congreve’s career as a playwright was short but brilliant: he achieved fame early, with his first play, The Old Bachelor, produced when he was only twenty-three; but he fell foul of changing mores and increasing attacks upon the “immorality” of the stage and, always sensitive to criticism, by the turn of the 18th century he had retreated almost into retirement. Nevertheless, Congreve is considered to have significantly influenced the course of English drama and comedy: his plays are still regularly revived, and two of them have given to the English vernacular lines that everyone knows, even if they don’t know the source: “Musick has charms to soothe a savage breast” and “Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d, Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned”, both from 1697’s The Mourning Bride; and “O fie, Miss, you must not kiss and tell” from 1695’s Love For Love.

After his career writing for the stage ended, Congreve dabbled in politics before turning back to literature, working on translations and writing poetry, and collaborating with John Vanbrugh and William Walsh on an English-language adaptation of Molière’s Monsieur de Pourceaugnac called Squire Trelooby. However, his health failed early; and after suffering a carriage-accident from which he never really recovered, Congreve died in 1729.

All of which is beside the point—or at least, beside OUR point—which is that before any of this, William Congreve wrote a novel.

I’ve nominated other years as being particularly important in the development of the English novel: 1689, for one, which seems to me the year that the word “novel” took over from “history” in describing a piece of fiction, and when the requirement to pretend that the story you were telling was true faded away.

1689 proved to be something of a false dawn, however, as a resurgence of political writing then proceeded to subsume fiction once again.

But in 1692, I believe we have the real deal. Not only is political writing conspicuous by its absence, but the words “a novel” appear almost without exception upon the title pages of that year’s publications—one of them being Incognita; or, Love And Duty Reconcil’d. A Novel.

This short work was revived and reissued in 1951 by the Folio Society—and it was this very slender volume (only 71 pages including an introduction, a dedication and a preface) that caught my eye while I was browsing the shelves of my academic library way back when.

The danger when dealing with Incognita, I think, is either demanding of it too much as a work by William Congreve, or not asking of it enough: dismissing it in contrast with his plays. Certainly no great claims for it can be made as literature. Rather, its interest lies in the fact that it exists at all: that Congreve, in first putting pen to paper, turned his talents to the form of writing that was rapidly gaining dominance in the marketplace. Some scholars believe that he may have written it when he was only seventeen, but not published it until five years later, which is interesting in itself. Still more so is the extent to which Congreve, both in his introduction and his text, addresses the reader directly—and what he has to say.

Because the first thing Congreve does is define for us the difference between the European “romance” and the English “novel”: a distinction that would occupy a great many English writers going forward (though the matter was never as clear cut as the English liked to think, as we saw via James R. Foster’s History Of The Pre-Romantic Novel In England):

Romances are generally composed of the Constant Loves and invincible Courages of Hero’s, Heroins, Kings and Queens, Mortals of the first Rank, and so forth; where lofty Language, miraculous Contingencies and impossible Performances, elevate and surprize the Reader into a giddy Delight, which leaves him flat upon the Ground whenever he gives of, and vexes him to think how he has suffer’d himself to be pleased and transported, concern’d and afflicted at the several Passages which he has Read, viz. these Knights Success to their Damosels Misfortunes, and such like, when he is forced to be very well convinced that ’tis all a lye. Novels are of a more familiar nature; Come near us, and represent to us Intrigues in practice, delight us with Accidents and odd Events, but not such as are wholly unusual or unpresidented, such which not being so distant from our Belief bring also the pleasure nearer us. Romances give more of Wonder, Novels more Delight…

This is a fascinating passage when placed in the context of the English novel’s very struggle to exist. Lingering puritan impulses in England frowned upon fiction as a form of lying, and for decades authors were forced to pretend that they were telling true stories – “histories” – rather than presenting their readers with something made up.

What Congreve does here is turn that argument on its head: it is the romance, with its high-flown content and its improbabilities, that is “all a lye”; and it is the novel that offers a more truthful picture of life—“not so distant from our Belief”.

Nevertheless, the reader of Incognita may feel that Congreve was being somewhat disingenuous here, since his novel is set amongst the nobility of Italy—Mortals of the first Rank, as you might say.

This setting also highlights another ongoing struggle, the right of the English novel to be English: as we have seen, it was far more common for even those works willing to call themselves “novels” to be set somewhere else.

The protagonist of Incognita, or one of them, is Aurelian, the only son of a wealthy and prominent gentleman of Florence, Don Fabio. At eighteen, Aurelian is completing his education in Sienna when he meets and becomes intimate with a Spaniard of his own age, Hippolito, who is travelling for his own education under the guardianship of a certain Signio Claudio. Unfortunately for the friends, Hippolito has been called home by his uncle, the Archbishop of Toledo, and it seems that they must part. Reluctant to do so, they begin looking for ways around this edict. Discovering that despite his travels, Hippolito has never been to Florence, Aurelian proposes that his friend take a rather circuitous route home via that city, and that he, Aurelian, accompany him.

Drawing near to their destination, the young men discover that a near-relation of a “great duke” is to be married, and that extraordinary celebrations have been planned to mark the occasion:

…Balls and Masques, and other Divertisements; that a Tilting had been proclaimed, and to that purpose Scaffolds erected around the Spacious Court, before the Church Di Santa Croce, where were usually seen all Cavalcades and Shews, performed by Assemblies of the Young Nobility: That all Mechanicks and Tradesmen were forbidden to work or expose any Goods to Sale for the space of three days; during which time all Persons should be entertain’d at the Great Duke’s Cost; and publick Provision was to be made for the setting forth and furnishing a multitude of Tables, with Entertainment for all Comers and Goers, and several Houses appointed for that use in all Streets.

Having found lodgings, the young men set about securing appropriately rich clothing to wear at the upcoming masque but, having arrived late, can only secure a single outfit—each trying to cede it to the other. Their dilemma is solved by one of their servants, who encounters another with a suit of clothing to sell: his own master being too unwell to wear it. Hippolito purchases the suit and, both properly dressed and appropriately masked, the two young men plunge into the revels.

At this point, William Congreve first makes his own presence felt. Having diverted from his characters’ movements with a description of the scene—

…such a prodigious number of Torches were on fire, that the day, by help of these Auxiliary Forces, seem’d to continue its Dominion; the Owls and Bats apprehending their mistake, in counting the hours, retir’d again to a convenient darkness; for Madam Night was no more to be seen than she was to be heard; and the Chymists were of Opinion, That her fuliginous Damps, rarefy’d by the abundance of Flame, were evaporated…

—he then addresses his reader directly:

Now the Reader I suppose to be upon Thorns at this and the like impertinent Digressions, but let him alone and he’ll come to himself; at which time I think fit to acquaint him, that when I digress, I am at that time writing to please my self, when I continue the Thread of the Story, I write to please him; supposing him a reasonable Man, I conclude him satisfied to allow me this liberty, and so I proceed…

Aurelian and Hippolito are at first almost overwhelmed with the glories of their surroundings, but they soon set their sights upon some fun with the many women present. They decide to separate for an hour, each to pursue his own fortune.

Aurelian already has his eye on one particular lady, and accosts her with bows and compliments. She allows his attention, and soon reveals a nice skill at repartee—rather better than Aurelian’s:

She thanked him for his Complement, and briskly told him she ought to have made him a return in praise of his wit, but she hoped he was a Man more happy than to be dissatisfy’d with any of his own Endowments; and if it were so, that he had not a just Opinion of himself, she knew her self incapable of saying any thing to beget one. Aurelian did not know well what to make of this last reply; for he always abhor’d any thing that was conceited, with which this seem’d to reproach him. But however modest he had been heretofore in his own thoughts, yet never was he so distrustful of his good behaviour as now, being rally’d so by a Person whom he took to be of judgment…

The two then dance, and between that and the “rallery”—

…for his part, he was strangely and insensibly fallen in love with her Shape, Wit and Air; which, together with a white Hand, he had seen (perhaps not accidentally) were enough to have subdued a more stubborn Heart than ever he was master of; and for her Face, which he had not seen, he bestowed upon her the best his Imagination could furnish him with…

Hippolito, meanwhile, is having his own adventure: a woman signals her desire to speak to him privately, and then addresses him as “Don Lorenzo”. Realising that she has mistaken him for the original owner of his costume – her cousin, as it turns out – he decides to play along; although the lady’s hurried conversation raises some alarm in him:

“I am overjoy’d to see you are so speedily recovered of your Wounds, which by report were much more dangerous than to have suffered your coming abroad so soon; but I must accuse you of great indiscretion, in appearing in a Habit which so many must needs remember you to have worn upon the like occasion not long ago, I mean at the Marriage of Don Cynthio with your Sister Atalanta; I do assure you, you were known by it, both to Juliana and my self, who was so far concerned for you, as to desire me to tell you, that her Brother Don Fabritio (who saw you when you came in with another Gentleman) had eyed you very narrowly, and is since gone out of the Room, she knows not upon what design; however she would have you, for your own sake, be advised and circumspect when you depart this place, lest you should be set upon unawares; you know the hatred Don Fabritio has born you ever since you had the fortune to kill his Kinsman in a Duel…”

Realising he may have bitten off a bit more than he can chew, Hippolito is about to reveal himself when his companion, misunderstanding his hesitation in replying, removes her mask to prove her identity:

…and discovered to Hippolito (now more amaz’d than ever) the most Angelick Face that he had ever beheld…

He is still trying to think of a way to extricate himself gracefully from the situation – assuming he really wants to – when his companion startles him by mentioning Aurelian’s father:

“I am mighty glad that I have met with you here, where I have had an Opportunity to tell you what so much concerns your Safety, which I am afraid you will not find in Florence; considering the great Power Don Fabritio and his Father, the Marquess of Viterbo, have in this City. I have another thing to inform you of, That whereas Don Fabio had interested himself in your Cause, in Opposition to the Marquess of Viterbo, by reason of the long Animosity between them, all hopes of his Countenance and Assistance are defeated: For there has been a Proposal of Reconciliation made to both Houses, and it is said it will be confirm’d (as most such ancient Quarrels are at last) by the Marriage of Juliana the Marquess’s Daughter, with Aurelian, Son to Don Fabio…”

Finally forced to reply, Hippolito does so in such a faint, muffled voice that Leonora, worried that “Don Lorenzo” is still insufficiently recovered from his wounds, proposes that the two withdraw from the masque. She leads him away from the crowds towards her own house—

…which gave Hippolito time to consider of the best way of discovering himself. A thousand things came into his Head in a minute, yet nothing that pleased him: and after so many Contrivances as he had formed for the discovery of himself, he found it more rational for him not to reveal himself at all that Night, since he could not foresee what effect the surprize would have, she must needs be in, at the appearance of a Stranger, whom she had never seen before, yet whom she had treated so familiarly. He knew Women were apt to shriek or swoon upon such Occasions, and should she happen to do either, he might be at a loss how to bring himself off. He thought he might easily pretend to be indisposed somewhat more than ordinary, and so make an excuse to go to his own Lodging. It came into his Head too, that under pretence of giving her an account of his Health, he might enquire of her the means how a Letter might be convey’d to her the next morning, wherein he might inform her gently of her mistake, and insinuate something of that Passion he had conceiv’d…

Meanwhile, Congreve here grants the reader more information than he has yet given his main characters; or as he puts it himself—

…let me take the liberty to digress a little, and tell the Reader something which I do not doubt he has apprehended himself long ago, if he be not the dullest Reader in the World…

—namely that Don Fabritio, as Leonora feared, recognised the outfit of clothing that Hippolito was wearing; but unlike Leonora herself, he also knew that far from attending the masque, Lorenzo was himself gravely wounded in the duel and is not expected to live; so that Hippolito was not in fact in danger of family vengeance, despite the demands of honour:

Fabritio being much concerned for his Kinsman, vow’d revenge (according to the ancient and laudable custom of Italy) upon Lorenzo if he surviv’d, or in case of his death (if it should happen to anticipate that, much more swinging Death which he had in store for him) upon his next of Kin, and so to descend Lineally like an English Estate, to all the Heirs Males of this Family…

And having caught us up with Hippolito’s present circumstances, Congreve returns to Aurielian:

So, Reader, having now discharg’d my Conscience of a small Discovery which I thought my self obliged to make to Thee, I proceed to tell thee, that our Friend Aurelian had by this time danced himself into a Net which he neither could, nor which is worse desired to untangle…

Aurelian is, in fact, busy making declarations of undying passion to the woman whose identity he still doesn’t know; yet in the middle of these solemn vows, he is also telling her lies:

    Aurelian was unwilling for the present to own himself to be really the Man he was; when a suddain thought came into his Head to take upon him the Name and Character of Hippolito, who he was sure was not known in Florence…
    “I am by Birth a Spaniard, of the City of Toledo; my name Hippolito di Saviolina: I was yesterday a Man free, as Nature made the first; to day I am fallen into a Captivity, which must continue with my Life, and which, it is in your power, to make much dearer to me. Thus in obedience to your Commands, and contrary to my Resolution of remaining unknown in this place, I have inform’d you, Madam, what I am; what I shall be, I desire to know from you; at least, I hope, the free discovery I have made of my self, will encourage you to trust me with the knowledge of your Person.”

The woman, more cautious – and more truthful – then offers “Hippolito” a choice: he may know her name, or see her face:

    …she pull’d off her Mask, and appear’d to him at once in the Glory of Beauty. But who can tell the astonishment Aurelian felt? He was for a time senseless; Admiration had suppress’d his Speech, and his Eyes were entangled in Light.
    In short, to be made sensible of his condition, we must conceive some Idea of what he beheld, which is not to be imagined till seen, nor then to be express’d. Now see the impertinence and conceitedness of an Author, who will have a fling at a Description, which he has Prefaced with an impossibility…

When the time comes for them to part, in spite of all this “Hippolito” again pleads to know the woman’s name. She answers only, “Incognita…”

After a few more confusing adventures with which we need not concern ourselves, Aurelian and Hippolito meet up at their lodgings and exchange love-stories. In the course of this, Aurelian learns to his dismay that his father, in order to put to rest the family feud, has engaged him to Juliana, the daughter of the Marquess of Viterbo; and also that Don Fabio knows that he is in Florence. Aurelian resolves to avoid his father at all cost, in order to be compelled neither to obey nor disobey him.

Hippolito’s problem, meanwhile, is how tactfully to inform Leonora that she has been confidential with a complete stranger, and that the complete stranger in question is in love with her:

    He look’d upon it as an unlucky thought in Aurelian to take upon him his Name, since possibly the Two Ladies were acquainted, and should they communicate to each other their Adventures; they might both reasonably suffer in their Opinions, and be thought guilty of Falshood, since it would appear to them as One Person pretending to Two. Aurelian told him, there was but one Remedy for that, which was for Hippolito, in the same Manner that he had done, to make use of his Name, when he writ to Leonora, and use what arguments he could to perswade her to Secrecy, least his Father should know of the Reason which kept him concealed in Town. And it was likely, though perhaps she might not immediately entertain his Passion; yet she would out of Generosity conceal, what was hidden only for her sake.
    Well this was concluded on, after a great many other Reasons used on either Side, in favour of the Contrivance; they at last argued themselves into a Belief, that Fortune had befriended them with a better Plot, than their regular Thinking could have contriv’d. So soon had they convinc’d themselves, in what they were willing to believe…

Leonora is at first horrified and offended, when she receives a letter from “Aurelian” explaining her error of the evening before; but before long – and having read the impassioned epistle several times – she begins to make excuses for its author, and to find much to admire within. Indeed, her thoughts lead her so rapidly away that, when she catches herself, she is shocked:

    She had proceeded thus far in a maze of Thought, when she started to find her self so lost to her Reason, and would have trod back again that path of deluding Fancy; accusing her self of Fondness, and inconsiderate Easiness, in giving Credit to the Letter of a Person whose Face she never saw, and whose first Acquaintance with her was a Treachery, and he who could so readily deliver his Tongue of a Lye upon a Surprize, was scarce to be trusted when he had sufficient Time allow’d him to beget a Fiction, and Means to perfect the Birth.
    How did she know this to be Aurelian, if he were? Nay farther, put it to the Extremity, What if she should upon farther Conversation with him proceed to Love him? What Hopes were there for her? Or how could she consent to Marry a Man already Destined for another Woman? nay, a Woman that was her Friend, whose Marrying with him was to compleat the happy Reconciliation of Two Noble Families, and which might prevent the Effusion of much Blood likely to be shed in that Quarrel: Besides, she should incurr share of the Guilt, which he would draw upon him by Disobedience to his Father, whom she was sure would not be consenting to it…

We then get a piece of infuriating male smugness from William Congreve, whose male protagonists, let us remind ourselves, have done nothing but lie to the women they supposedly love since they met them: apparently this comes under the heading of “all’s fair”, as no criticism is made of their conduct. Of Leonora, however, who finds herself the more strongly attracted to “Aurelian” the more reasons that they cannot be together occur to her, we get this:

    ’Tis strange now, but all Accounts agree, that just here Leonora, who had run like a violent Stream against Aurelian hitherto, now retorted with as much precipitation in his Favour. I could never get any Body to give me a satisfactory reason, for her suddain and dextrous Change of Opinion just at that stop, which made me conclude she could not help it; and that Nature boil’d over in her at that time when it had so fair an Opportunity to show it self: For Leonora it seems was a Woman Beautiful, and otherwise of an excellent Disposition; but in the Bottom a very Woman. This last Objection, this Opportunity of perswading Man to Disobedience, determined the Matter in Favour of Aurelian, more than all his Excellencies and Qualifications, take him as Aurelian, or Hippolito, or both together.
    Well, the Spirit of Contradiction and of Eve was strong in her; and she was in a fair Way to Love Aurelian…

The masque of the night before gives way to a tournament: both Aurelian and Hippolito don armour, concealing their faces behind their visors, and join the lists; the latter wearing Leonora’s handkerchief as a favour, and the former, having nothing to display, drawing himself to the attention of his Incognita by “bowing to her after the Spanish mode”. Both young men perform well, particularly in the jousting that closes the entertainment (that is, the participants use blunted lances); and both manage to steal away without their identities being revealed.

Also attending the tournament was Don Fabio, who thinks he has a very good idea who the two unknown young knights were; and when the nobles of Florence praise the two, and speculate over their identities, vanity makes him speak out:

This discovery having thus got vent, was diffused like Air; every body suck’d it in, and let it out again with their Breath to the next they met withal; and in half an hours time it was talked of in the House where our Adventurers were lodged. Aurelian was stark mad at the News, and knew what search would be immediately made for him. Hippolito, had he not been desperately in Love, would certainly have taken Horse and rid out of Town just then, for he could make no longer doubt of being discovered, and he was afraid of the just Exceptions Leonora might make to a Person who had now deceived her twice…

Meanwhile, the Duke is busy reconciling Don Fabio and the Marquess of Viterbo, who are still wary of one another, and pushing for the formalisation of the engagement of Aurelian to Juliana:

In short, by the Complaisant and Perswasive Authority of the Duke, the Dons were wrought into a Compliance, and accordingly embraced and shook Hands upon the Matter. This News was dispersed like the former, and Don Fabio gave orders for the enquiring out his Son’s Lodging, that the Marquess and he might make him a Visit, as soon as he had acquainted Juliana with his purpose, that she might prepare her self…

Juliana is anything but delighted by her father’s announcement, and by the ribald way he makes it in front of her friends—including Leonora, who withdraws in dismay, finding that the greater the obstacles become, the greater also her passion for “Aurelian”.

Elsewhere, the two young men are even more miserable:

Hippolito’s Speech, usher’d by a profound Sigh, broke Silence. “Well! (said he) what must we do, Aurelian?” “We must suffer,” replied Aurelian faintly. When immediately raising his Voice, he cry’d out, “Oh ye unequal Powers, why do ye urge us to desire what ye doom us to forbear; give us a Will to chuse, then curb us with a Duty to restrain that Choice! Cruel Father, Will nothing else suffice! Am I to be the Sacrifice to expiate your Offences past; past ere I was born? Were I to lose my Life, I’d gladly Seal your Reconcilement with my Blood. But Oh my Soul is free, you have no Title to my Immortal Being, that has Existence independent of your Power; and must I lose my Love, the Extract of that Being, the Joy, Light, Life, and Darling of my Soul?”

Before long, both young men find themselves having unexpected encounters with their beloveds: Hippolito – that is, “Aurelian” – is so fortunate as to hear Leonora give herself away via song and soliloquy; while Aurelian – that is, “Hippolito” – rescues Incognita from an assailant. Both men plead their passions, and win a confession of love returned; both plead for an immediate marriage, that their lives need not be ruined by the forced and unwanted union of Aurelian and Juliana.

Well. I think we can see where this is headed…

I have my suspicions about the origins of Incognita; or, Love And Duty Reconcil’d. I don’t think William Congreve set out to write a novel at all: I think this was his first attempt at writing a play. There’s hardly a moment in this comedy of mistaken (or false) identity where you can’t imagine how it might have played out on the stage, in particular an amusing passage towards the end where various people keep running in and out of Aurelian and Hippolito’s lodgings, always finding there someone other than the person they expect to see.

In his introduction, in which starts out by comparing “romances” and “Novels”, William Congreve goes on to explain the inferiority of both to drama:

    And with reverence be it spoken, and the Parallel kept at due distance, there is something of equality in the Proportion which they bear in reference to one another, with that between Comedy and Tragedy; but the Drama is the long extracted from Romance and History: ’tis the Midwife to Industry, and brings forth alive the Conceptions of the Brain. Minerva walks upon the Stage before us, and we are more assured of the real presence of Wit when it is delivered viva voce…
    Since all Traditions must indisputably give place to the Drama, and since there is no possibility of giving that life to the Writing or Repetition of a Story which it has in the Action, I resolved in another beauty to imitate Dramatick Writing, namely, in the Design, Contexture and Result of the Plot. I have not observed it before in a Novel. Some I have seen begin with an unexpected accident, which has been the only surprizing part of the Story, cause enough to make the Sequel look flat, tedious and insipid; for ’tis but reasonable the Reader should expect it not to rise, at least to keep upon a level in the entertainment; for so he may be kept on in hopes that at some time or other it may mend; but the ’tother is such a balk to a Man, ’tis carrying him up stairs to show him the Dining-Room, and after forcing him to make a Meal in the Kitchin…

There are, furthermore, various points at which Congreve’s attitude is amusingly like that of those stage actors who were persuaded to act in film in its early days: taking the money, sure, but convinced of the natural inferiority of this new form of entertainment.

But as I say, despite his declared intention of writing prose in which he would nevertheless “imitate Dramatick writing”, I think William Congreve originally intended to write a play—only the plot he came up with was so flimsy, he couldn’t stretch it out to the obligatory three acts. And then, when he couldn’t get his comedy to work in that format—instead of destroying his drafts, or shoving them into a drawer for a later time, he turned his story into a novel.

This wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen such a transformation. We’ve already dealt with William Chamberlayne’s Eromena; or, The Noble Stranger, published in 1683, wherein Chamberlayne turned his own epic poem, Pharinnida, into a novel; and also the anonymous 1689 reworking of another, centuries-old epic poem into The Famous And Renowned History Of Sir Bevis Of Southampton. In both of these cases, there is a clear acknowledgement of the extent to which the English reading public was becoming a novel-reading public.

But—I could be entirely wrong about the origins of Incognita, which would be no less interesting or significant. Perhaps the most fascinating touch here is the extent to which future playwright William Congreve reveals himself as a novel-reader: so much so, he can offer a thoughtful criticism of their shortcomings. And perhaps he did indeed sit down to write a short fiction work in which, in his opinion, those shortcomings were addressed.

In the end, however, the question of whether William Congreve did or did not set out to write a novel is infinitely less important that the fact that he did it at all.

1692, you people: mark it in your diaries!
 

 

 

One step forward, thirteen years’ steps back

I wonder, can I ever make a plan that doesn’t immediately hit an obstacle?

Apparently not.

Having posted the other day, I was doing some bookish busy-work – uploading covers, checking publication dates, that sort of thing – which I find helps gets my head in the right place for some actual writing, when to my horror I discovered on my to-be-reviewed lists what seemed to be an overlooked work of fiction from 1679:

(Before you ask, I disposed of The English Monsieur here – in a post where, I see, I was also complaining about obstacles! – only one of its four parts is available.)

I’ve talked before about the two Lizzie Bates-es; this, however, given the publication date, looked like a case of Lizzie-Bates-C.

After a gawping moment, it was clear what had happened: this wasn’t an oversight, this was a belated addition on the strength of its attribution: an attribution clearly incorrect but understandable, probably the work of an over-officious algorithm. The first Miss Bates, Lizzie-Bates-A, often published as “by a Lady”: this is “by a Lady”, therefore it is by Lizzie Bates. And I added it to the lists automatically without looking at the date.

The problem is…I don’t think I can just let it go.

In the first place, this appears to be a very early piece of outright English fiction – not political writing, not a roman à clef, not a hoax, not an autobiography – just a story; in fact, by date second only to Richard Head’s The English Rogue. I mourned the loss of The English Monsieur on exactly these grounds.

But there is a second critical aspect to The Penitent Hermit. Of course I don’t know for sure that it was actually written by “a Lady”, though I can’t think why, in 1679, a man would have been masquerading under a female pseudonym; I’m hoping I can get a feel from the tone of it. And if this was the work of a woman, it is the earliest piece of female-authored post-Restoration English fiction that I’ve come across, pre-dating the contentiously-authored The London Jilt by four years and our first definite example, Aphra Behn’s Love Letters Between A Nobleman And His Sister, by five.

There’s also this, as noted by Robert Ignatius Letellier’s The English Novel, 1660-1700: An Annotated Bibliography, the only tiny piece of information I’ve found about this work (nothing about its author, alas):

A “fairly realistic setting” is not something often found in the writing of this time either.

So all things considered, this is a work that needs examination.

But what I will do is leave it until after I’ve taken that one step forward in my Chronobibliography: in my case, as they say, a giant leap…

 

 

 

And the rest

I’m pleased with the way this year has gone so far – so far – in that I’ve stuck to my resolution of regular postings, and got several of my subsections moving again: Chronobibliography, the Gothic novel, and Authors In Depth; as well as keeping my struggle through the pre-history of the silver-fork novel ticking along.

And after an absurdly long delay, I have at least read the book that represents the point at which Reading Roulette got stuck: Pique by Sarah Stickney Ellis.

Of course all this progress has had its usual consequence, in that I’m letting myself get carried away: I’m currently eyeing my list of “side-project” books, those which have come up in discussion and noted as worthy of consideration for one reason or another; namely—

– Gains And Losses: Novels Of Faith And Doubt In Victorian England by Robert Lee Wolff: the third of the important studies of the 19th century religious novel, along with Joseph Ellis Baker’s The Novel And The Oxford Movement and Margaret Maison’s Search Your Soul, Eustace. I have actually read this with intention to blog; but it turned out to be another instance of pondering how to attack a book so long, I forgot what I wanted to say in the first place. The problem is that this lengthy work goes off on tangents from the main issue, so it’s a case of picking the eyes out of it. That said, it does do one insanely clever thing in its handling of the proliferating 19th century religious factions, which on its own makes it worthy of review.

– The Man Of Feeling by Henry Mackenzie: this one came up apropos of Julia de Roubigné, which we agreed was a deconstruction of the sentimental novel, rather than a sentimental novel itself—raising the question of whether Mackenzie’s earlier work, too, had been so intended. There are certainly some novels (for example, John Robinson’s Sydney St. Aubyn) where it is difficult to tell whether or not we’re supposed to take the narrative at face value; but as I confessed at the time, I’ve never had any sense that The Man Of Feeling wasn’t written with a straight face, and the thought that Mackenzie had intended it as a criticism of the overwrought sentimentalism that infected English novels during the second half of the 18th century was intriguing.

– Le Loup Blanc by Paul Féval: we touched upon this one in the lead-up to Féval’s Les Mystères de Londres, at which time I remarked of it, “The hero…is a Zorro-esque figure who fights against injustice—and may be the earliest example of the crime-fighter with a double life and a secret identity. (He’s also an albino, because if there’s one thing Paul Féval believed in, it was piling it on.)” ‘Nuff said.

– Theresa Marchmont; or, The Maid Of Honour by Catherine Gore: this is also about the pre-history of the silver-fork novel, though in a different way. Gore was that genre’s leading exponent, and a clever and entertaining writer; but she got her start writing “proper” novels, and this was her first.

I think all four of those are worth tackling…sigh…though beforehand, I’d really like to get through both Pique and Mary Leman Grimstone’s Louisa Egerton; or, Castle Herbert—the latter with a view to re-starting that subsection conspicuous by its ongoing absence, Australian fiction.

Having finished reading Pique, I allowed myself a spin of the wheel for Reading Roulette—and ended up making a decision that, astonishingly enough, should make things a little easier around here rather than (as usual) exponentially harder.

The book I landed on was Octavus Roy Cohen’s Midnight, from 1922. A little research determined that this is one of Cohen’s mysteries, featuring series detective, David Carroll.

I have, in the past, simply carried on upon hitting a book like that; but I’ve decided I’m not going to any more. Since that time my mystery and series reading has multiplied exponentially into a major project (albeit one dealt with elsewhere); and on that basis, I’m going to eliminate such works from Reading Roulette. I will still read Midnight (at least, I won’t: I’ll be reading The Crimson Alibi, the first in the David Carroll series), but it won’t be written up here.

A second spin of the wheel then landed me on Sinclair Lewis’s Our Mr Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures Of A Gentle Man, from 1914; and that’s what I’ll be blogging.

 

A silver fork in the road

I have a clutch of unwritten posts to catch up, so naturally I’m thinking about starting something new instead.

As I have mentioned previously, one of my areas of interest – which so far I haven’t gotten around to pursuing – is the so-called “silver-fork novel”. There are a couple of different though linked reasons for this interest. The first is that these novels occupy what tends to be regarded as a lacuna in the timeline of English literature: those years between the time of Jane Austen and Walter Scott, during the Regency, and the coming of William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens, more or less simultaneously with the ascension of Victoria. It is generally considered that there was an absence of great writers and writers during that period, that it was occupied instead with popular but ephemeral fiction of limited literary merit, and is therefore not worth studying.

Though this is a common viewpoint, it doesn’t happen to be my viewpoint. Though on the whole I don’t dispute the criticism of the fiction of the 1820s and 1830s on the grounds of its lack of artistry, I do dispute its worthlessness. As we have seen before, literature of this ephemeral nature is often extremely revealing of the society that produced it; and this is perhaps more the case with the silver-fork novel than with any other genre, as it was intended specifically to offer immediate, detailed portraits of the English upper classes.

However popular they were with the reading public, the critics savaged this branch of writing. In fact, it was the critic Walter Hazlitt who inadvertently gave the genre its enduring name, in an article attacking the novels of Theodore Hook, which (in Hazlitt’s view) were not only poorly written, but further marred by the self-evident fact that the author was not even of the society he purported to depict. If he had been, Hazlitt sneered, surely he would not have been so dazzled by a certain aristocratic dinner-table ritual:

Provided a few select persons eat fish with silver forks, he considers it a circumstance of no consequence if a whole country starves; but these privileged persons are surely not thinking all the time and every day of their lives of that which Mr Theodore Hook has never forgotten since he first witnessed it, viz. that they eat their fish with a silver fork…

Nevertheless, for approximately twenty years, the English reading public devoured these vivid accounts of upper-class life. For the aristocracy, they were an amusing mirror; for those with social aspirations, a guidebook; for the rest, either a glimpse of a dazzlingly exclusive world to which they could not even dream of finding an entrance, a shocking exposé of aristocratic immorality, or a comforting reminder that wealth does not necessarily bring happiness.

Then, almost overnight, these most fashionable of novels became unfashionable; what had made them so popular in the easy-going days of the Regency and under the profligate rule of George IV put them beyond the pale in a society increasingly gripped by (in the mournful words of Alfred Doolittle) middle-class morality.

The death-blow was struck by Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, which managed simultaneously to be the silver-fork novel to (literally) end all silver-fork novels, and a savage deconstruction of the genre. From the mid-1830s onwards, the silver-fork novels began to disappear from the shelves of the circulating libraries, to be replaced by more “improving” tomes; very few were reprinted, and even those tended to be bowdlerised. Within a surprisingly short space of time, it was if they had never existed.

And this subset of writing remained largely disregarded until almost 150 years had passed, when historians (social and literary) began to realise that these novels, whatever their shortcomings as fiction, offered an extraordinarily detailed window into early 19th century life. Moreover, those academics who didn’t let their preconceptions or their snobbery get in the way discovered that among the silver-fork novelists were several who, if not “great”, were clever and entertaining—in particular Catherine Gore, who almost made the genre her own.

Being myself of the opinion that the literary canon does not properly reflect what people were really reading – and disliking the critical tendency to simply leap over decades while supposedly tracing the history of the novel – I have always had it in mind to take a look at some of the silver-fork novels—but my usual impulse to do everything “in order” and “from the beginning” repeatedly got in the way; not least because this story has an unexpected and rather peculiar beginning.

While I was researching early 19th century crime novels, such as Frances Trollope’s Hargrave and Catherine Crowe’s Men And Women; or, Manorial Rights – which emerged in the same lacuna as the silver-fork novels, and were similarly critically attacked – a strange web of novelistic connections began to emerge.

In particular, it seems that a major influence upon Mrs Trollope and her tendency, not just to include crime-plots in her novels, but to blend together different genres, was the work of Edward Bulwer-Lytton—and most of all his 1828 novel, Pelham; or, The Adventures Of A Gentleman. And this, in turn, was influenced by Benjamin Disraeli’s Vivian Grey, which was published the year before.

And both of these had already come to my attention—being mentioned in dispatches, as it were, not as actual silver-fork novels but, with their upper-class settings and social self-consciousness, as progenitor novels for the genre.

(Disraeli, like Theodore Hook, was pilloried for pretending to a knowledge of aristocratic life that he did not possess. Of course, as the Earl of Beaconsfield, he eventually had the last laugh.)

However, this is still not the starting-point: both Bulwer-Lytton and Disraeli were influenced in the writing of their novels by Thomas Carlyle’s translation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1796 novel, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, and the first version (it was later revised) of its sequel, Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years. Together, these novels are themselves considered to represent to birth of a new genre, the Bildungsroman.

So I’ve been pondering going back to Goethe for quite some time—and was finally prompted actually to do it by a coincidence. One of my off-blog reading projects (because, you know, I don’t have enough on-blog reading projects) is working through perhaps the first ever “Best 100 Novels” list to be compiled by a critic, that constructed by Clement King Shorter for The Bookman in 1898. Put together chronologically – and starting with Don Quixote – it’s an interesting if highly idiosyncratic list (which you may find here, if you’re interested) that I am using chiefly to plug some gaps in my reading.

(And because I just can’t get enough of lists.)

And at #28 on Shorter’s list we find Wilhelm Meister, the title given to Carlyle’s compiled translation.

What can I say? – I took it as A Sign…

 

Attribution confusion

Having succeeded in getting Chronobibliography moving again, I wanted to see, while I was on something at least resembling a roll, whether I could get another neglected blog section kick-started. And for obscure reasons with which I need not bore you, I came down upon the Authors In Depth section, and specifically the next novel by one or both of the sisters, Margaret Minifie and Susannah Minifie Gunning.

And almost immediately I hit a speed-bump…which my OCD promptly magnified into a brick wall.

It is known that the sisters wrote novels both separately and together, but correct attributions are difficult due to the range of ways in which they referred to themselves on their title-pages, and by Susannah changing her surname when she married (naturally enough, for the time).

Another complication is that Susannah’s daughter, Elizabeth, also became a novel-writer; and though she is referred to correctly as “Miss Gunning” in some quarters, in others her works have been attributed to her mother, that is, as by “Mrs Gunning”.

So instead of relying upon what seem, frankly, to be some people’s best guesses, I thought I would try to access the ladies’ books online and see what the title-pages actually say; and, working with the knowledge that Susannah got married in 1768 and that Elizabeth was born in 1769 and married in 1803, see what I could pin down, and what remains obscure.

The Histories Of Lady Frances S—, And Lady Caroline S— (1763) : “Written by the MISS MINIFIES, of Fairwater, in Somersetshire”
Family Pictures (1764) : “By a LADY”
The Picture (1766) : “By the MISS MINIFIES of Fairwater in Somersetshire, Authors of The Histories Of Lady Frances S—, And Lady Caroline S—”
Barford Abbey (1768) : Neither the Dublin first edition nor the London second edition carries an attribution, although the latter carries a handwritten note, “By Mrs Susannah (Minifie) Gunning” (NB: this is the year Susannah married) [NB: epistolary]
The Cottage (1769) : “By Miss MINIFIE, Author of Barford-Abbey”
The Hermit (1769) : “By a LADY” (NB: the 1770 edition is attributed to “Miss MINIFIE, Author of Barford-Abbey, The Cottage, &c”; the 1771 edition is attributed to “Miss MINIFIES”, which we can cautiously assume to be a typo rather than a joint-attribution)

Apparently both Margaret and Susannah then fell silent for some eleven years (during which time, some of their works did appear in second and third editions; incredible as that may seem if you’ve actually read them).

The Count de Poland (1780) : “By Miss M. Minifie, one of the authors of Lady Frances and Lady Caroline S—” (the latter suggesting that the ladies’ first novel had been reissued under a revised title; though I can find no record of it)
Coombe Wood (1783) : “By the author of Barford-Abbey and The Cottage” [NB: epistolary]

More silence followed, until the eruption of the Gunning scandal in 1791; in which Margaret was (rightly or wrongly) implicated. And it was after that – after John Gunning had booted them out in an attempt to save his own skin – that both Susannah and Elizabeth began writing to support themselves.

Susannah died in 1800; Elizabeth married John Plunkett in 1803, and after that published as “Mrs Elizabeth Gunning Plunkett” (or a variation thereof). Margaret, meanwhile, almost certainly died during the 1790s: the date of her death is not known, but the last records to show her alive are from April 1791.

Anecdotes Of The Delborough Family (1792) : “By Mrs Gunning”
Memoirs Of Mary (1793) : “By Mrs Gunning”
Delves, A Welch Tale (1796) : “By Mrs Gunning”
Love At First Sight (1797) : Reviewed by Tobias Smollet in The Critical Review as “From the French. With Alterations and Additions. By Mrs Gunning”
Fashionable Involvements (1800) : “By Mrs Gunning”
The Heir Apparent (1802) : “By the late Mrs Gunning” (Susannah died in 1800, leaving this unfinished; Elizabeth finished and published it; it is sometimes listed as “Revised by Miss Gunning”)

The Packet (1794) : “By Miss Gunning”
Lord Fitzhenry (1794) : “By Miss Gunning”
Memoirs Of Madame de Barnveldte (1975) : “Translated from the French by Miss Gunning”
The Foresters (1796) : “Altered from the French by Miss Gunning”
The Orphans Of Snowdon (1797) : “By Miss Gunning”
The Gipsy Countess (1799) : “By Miss Gunning”
The Farmer’s Boy (1802) : “By Miss Gunning” (in some editions; others have it as “By the author of Love At First Sight–Gipsy Countess”, which is just confusing)
The War-Office (1803) : “By Mrs Elizabeth Gunning Plunkett”
The Exile Of Erin (1808) : “By Mrs Plunkett, late Miss Gunning”
Dangers Through Life (1810) : “By Mrs Plunkett (late Miss Gunning)”; may have been reissued in 1815 as “The Victims Of Seduction”

And an outlier: The Union (1802), listed as “By Miss Minifie”, at a time when Susannah was dead, and Margaret presumed so.

We can appreciate that, cashing in as they were on the family scandal, both Susannah and Elizabeth wanted their authorship known. It is those earlier novels where the mystery remains—and while most of them have traditionally been attributed to Susannah (probably because her name is better known), the weight of that title-page evidence suggests that Margaret wrote all of the earlier solo efforts; and that Susannah did not write a novel on her own until the 1790s. It also makes more historical sense, if I can put it that way, that the unmarried Margaret went on writing, while Susannah did not take it up in earnest until she had to earn her own living.

One of the consequences of this research is that I now believe that, in originally attributing Barford Abbey to Susannah, I was probably wrong; and that I need to revise my post about the novel to reflect this.

As for the book that brought me to all this, 1764’s Family Pictures – “By a LADY” – the jury is out. Granted, it’s one of the works usually attributed to Susannah—but then, nearly everything is. And if I needed any more of a reminder to tread cautiously in that respect, I have it in The New Cambridge Bibliography Of English Literature, edited by George Watson, which on one page of the second volume lists both Family Pictures and Barford Abbey, attributing both to Susannah—and offering of the latter the following synopsis:

Heroine, disfigured with smallpox, rewards hero with riches.

…when in fact:

• she catches smallpox but is not disfigured;
• she has no riches;
• she marries the hero.

 

Reynolds the Radical

Mystery and detective fiction as we now understand it emerged via a one-hundred-year-long literary journey, during which the Gothic novel – itself a backlash against the repressive tenets of the Age of Reason – gave rise to the Newgate novel and “domestic-Gothic” fiction, such as Jane Eyre, which in turn inspired the rise of sensation fiction, best exemplified by the works of Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon in England, and in America, those of E. D. E. N. Southworth.

From such melodramatic fiction emerged the detective story proper: a final turn of the evolutionary wheel not without irony, inasmuch as, instead of dwelling upon transgression and challenges to the “natural” order of things, the detective story was very much about the restoration of that order. It offered, in effect, the tenets of the Age of Reason in an entertaining package, being in general all about the intellect, and often comprising cautionary tales of the dangers of the passions.

An important stepping-stone, which appeared almost exactly midway through this evolutionary process, was the French feuilletons and their English equivalents, the penny-dreadfuls: both of which began to offer readers long, tortuously complicated narratives built around a central mystery, the unravelling of which gave at least some semblance of structure to an often mindbogglingly discursive plot.

This subgenre had its birth with Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris, which initially appeared in Le Journal des Débats between June 1842 and October 1843, and went on to achieve immense popularity all over the world. In the nature of things, it was not long before others tried to copy Sue’s formula. The first to do so was Paul Féval, whose Les Mystères de Londres was published in Le Courrier Français during 1844—almost coincident with the appearance of the first English attempt at such fiction, also called The Mysteries Of London, by George William Macarthur Reynolds.

Reynolds was an intriguing individual, one of Victorian England’s great anomalies. He was born into a naval family, but not only rejected this tradition (or it rejected him: there was some early trouble), he left England for France when only sixteen to immerse himself in the excitements of the July Revolution. Reynolds remained an unabashed Francophile all his life, openly celebrating the revolutions of 1830 and 1848; yet (despite what his enemies said) always advocated political change in England via constant but non-violent agitation.

Reynolds was a Chartist and a socialist who dabbled in politics, but ultimately focused upon pushing his radical agenda in his own newspapers and magazines, and in his fiction. He was in favour of universal male suffrage, and fought for it throughout his life. (It is not clear to me if he was against votes for women, or if he simply felt that he already had a big enough battle on his hands.) He championed the cause of the working-classes, and made it his business to inform the workers of their legal rights, and how those rights were being violated by their employers.  He was an anti-imperialist and an anti-colonialist who despised the upper classes, the aristocracy, the monarchy, the military and the church, and attacked these institutions at every opportunity; and while he generally avoided being too critical of Victoria, he made up for it up by absolutely pummelling Albert. He wrote melodramatic fiction aimed chiefly at the newly literate, in which he wove radical social criticism into tales full of crime, violence and sex; becoming notorious for his blunt treatment of such things as rape, prostitution and incest, and his open hostility towards the British class system.

It is, therefore, not altogether surprising that in most sections of Victorian England, Reynolds was persona non grata.

Indeed, it was not long after Reynolds’ The Mysteries Of London starting appearing in weekly penny issues that it began, in spite of – or because of – its enormous contemporary popularity, to be held up as the exemplar of everything that was vicious and vile about “lower-class” literature; and it took little more time for it to enter the vernacular as a yardstick of criticism. Mainstream authors went out of their way to say how much they hated it, or at least – since they didn’t want it thought they had read it – what it represented. (We may feel inclined to question whether Charles Dickens’ open animus had its roots in Reynolds’ politics, the nature of his writing, or in the fact that Reynolds outsold him.) By the end of the century, Reynolds having died in 1879, The Mysteries Of London, along with most of the author’s other fiction, had been buried under a torrent of middle-class scorn.

And so things remained for quite some time. The first hints of a Reynolds revival happened in the 1930s, but it was not until the 1980s and 1990s that a real effort was made to resurrect his reputation—as a politician, as a journalist, and as an author. Fast forward a few decades more, and we find Reynolds and his world an accepted and fruitful area of academic study.

It will be obvious even from this brief overview that the subject of George Reynolds is a very big one—too big for this blog. However, in my efforts to get my head as least some of the way around the facts, I read G. W. M. Reynolds: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Politics, And The Press, a series of essays edited by Anne Humpherys and Louis James published in 2008, from which the above was extracted.

Meanwhile, my intention here is to focus upon that part of Reynolds’ career most relevant to us, his fiction: not in detail – even THAT would be too big a subject – but noting his fecundity, and highlighting some works we might want to return to.

In addition to his non-fiction and short stories, Reynolds wrote approximately forty novels – as always with these habitual serialisers, they were sometimes issued and reissued under different titles, so it isn’t easy to be sure – dealing with a wide range of subject matter, but generally pushing his political agenda. (It seems that the blending of that with more conventional novel aspects such as a romance-plot did not always have a happy result.)

It was, however, Reynolds’ historical fiction that first leapt out at me; and while the last thing I want to do is plunge myself back into the Restoration (although, mind you, Chronobibliography has its own ideas about that), I am finding myself drawn to The Rye House Plot; or, Ruth, The Conspirator’s Daughter: Reynolds loathed the Stuarts (Charles even more than James), and uses this novel to put the boot into them. However – proving that he was an equal-opportunity loather – Reynolds also wrote The Massacre Of Glencoe, in which he not only supports the Scots against the English (no great surprise), but offers an enthusiastically nasty of portrait of William III, who turns out to be the story’s villain. Nor did Reynolds confine himself to the male of the species: in Canonbury House; or, The Queen’s Prophecy, it is Elizabeth who takes a beating. On the other hand, Reynolds’ pro-French, pro-Scottish attitude led him to attempt a just portrait in Mary Stuart, Queen Of Scotland—which is evidently one of his few dull novels.

In the context of this blog, I feel I must mention that Reynolds not only followed Catharine Crowe in writing novels with servant heroes, Mary Price; or, The Memoirs Of A Servant-Maid and Joseph Wilmot; or, The Memoirs Of A Man Servant, in addition to an exposé of the abuses committed against working-class girls, The Seamstress: A Domestic Tale, he also wrote a rare British temperance novel, The Drunkard’s Tale.

However— I suspect that most of you might be more interested in the fact that Reynolds was the author of what is, perhaps, the third most famous penny-dreadful of all time: Wagner The Wehr-Wolf.

(Third most, that is, after A String Of Pearls, aka Sweeney Todd, and Varney The Vampire, both probably but not definitely by either or both of Thomas Peckett Prest and James Malcolm Rymer. And yes, I am fighting desperately right now against the temptation to add yet another section to this blog…)

But what we’re really here for, of course, is The Mysteries Of London and its even more massively long follow-up, The Mysteries Of The Court Of London.

Reynolds himself considered these two works as part of a single text, wrapping up the latter with a reference to their collective “six hundred and twenty-four weekly Numbers”, but their publication history works against this claim. The Mysteries Of London was published in weekly penny issues from October 1844 until September 1846; this “first series” comprised Volumes I and II when it was released in book form. The “second series”, later Volumes III and IV, ran from October 1846 until September 1848.

At this point Reynolds had a falling out with his publisher, George Vickers, and refused to write any more of his serial for him. Vickers responded by hiring two other authors, Thomas Miller and E. L. Blanchard, and having them continue it on under the same title. Reynolds, in turn, went into partnership with his assistant, John Dicks (who rose to become an important publisher of low-cost literature), and began writing The Mysteries Of The Court Of London—which eventually ran to four “series” between September 1848 and December 1855. Together, the two works comprise twelve volumes, a total of some nine million words.

It is impossible to estimate just how many people read Reynolds’ penny-dreadfuls (even taking into account the ones who felt obliged to deny that they did), since – as with much literature aimed predominantly at the working-classes – they were often purchased by clubs and societies, with each single issue being read by numerous individuals. Reynolds himself, in one of his newspapers, boasted about weekly sales of 250,000 copies, and studies suggest that if this was an exaggeration, it wasn’t much of one. In any event, it was enough people for The Mysteries Of London and its successor to become the focus of an early moral panic about the “corrupting effects” of this “cheap sensational literature”.

I don’t know about you, but I’m salivating in anticipation…

Now, obviously – very obviously – tackling these works will be no light undertaking. And indeed, until very recently it was one that was difficult to undertake at all. In 1996, Trefor Thomas, through the Keele University Press, published the first modern edition of The Mysteries Of London. It’s a good, well-intentioned, respectful book, prefaced by lots of interesting information about Reynolds and his works—but it’s also abridged. Fortunately, in 2012, the wonderful, wonderful people at Valancourt Books bit the bullet and put out unabridged, annotated editions of The Mysteries Of London, which are now also available in (rather more manageable) ebook form. As for The Mysteries Of The Court Of London, it seems to be available through the Internet Archive and other such online sources…but I’m not going to start worrying about that just yet…

 

Scandalous and slanderous

Oh, dear.

When I sat down to make a start upon the second section of Gallantry Unmask’d; or, Women In Their Proper Colours, bound with that text but given its own title of The History Of The Mareschalless De La Ferté, I almost immediately came across a mention of someone called “Bussy” or “Russy” (the print is smeared) which seemed to be a reference to a real person. Chasing up that detail, I was immediately plunged into an open can of worms.

To begin at the end, it seems that the author of Gallantry Unmask’d was not writing straight fiction at all, but instead plundering a variety of scandalous memoirs published in France earlier in the century; and that in fact, most of his “characters” are real people.

In describing the “Mareschalless”, the author mentions her sister, of whom he says:

…the Countess d’Olonne, whom Bussy has endeavoured to render famous to his Abilities, tho’ he has very much fail’d in it. The Copy Falling so short of the Original.

“Bussy” (as it turned out to be) is Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy, usually known as Bussy-Rabutin. He was a soldier (who spent time in the Bastille for neglecting his duties in favour of woman-chasing), and also a writer. He had a habit of libelling his enemies in dirty songs, which got him into trouble; although not as much as participating in a certain notorious orgy (which took place during Holy Week!), which saw him banished from court and exiled to his country estates. There he amused himself by writing Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules, a funny but spiteful series of character sketches of the ladies of the court of Louis XIV. The document ended up circulating a little wider than intended, and fell into the hands of Louis himself. Bussy-Rabutin had not spared the royal ladies any more than the rest, and this escapade landed him once more in the Bastille, this time for a full year.

One of the women targeted by Bussy-Rabutin was the Comtesse d’Olonne. Born Catherine-Henriette d’Angennes, the Comtesse was celebrated as the most beautiful woman in France, and immortalised as Diana by the artist, Jean Petitot. She was also notorious for her love affairs: so much so, she was made the subject of one volume of the series published some 250 years later by the art and literary historian, Émile Magne, entitled collectively La Galerie des Grandes Courtisanes.

The Comtesse d’Olonne did indeed have a sister, Madeleine (or Magdeleine), who married Henri de Senneterre, the Maréchal – later Duc – de la Ferté; and although she does not seem to have achieved her sister’s degree of, um, lasting fame, in her time she was equally notorious for her conduct.

(Both sisters appear as characters in a work of historical fiction, The Ivory Mischief by Arthur Meeker Jr, which is now on The List.)

The realisation that The History Of The Mareschalless de la Ferté was populated by real people made me wonder about Gallantry Unmask’d—and sure enough, that too is full of historical figures, which the author seems to have drawn from the works of Charles de Saint-Évremond. However, the ladies who dominate the text do not seem to have done so in real life, unlike the d’Angennes sisters; while the husbands and lovers who make such poor appearances were soldiers and statesmen: for instance, Hugues de Lionne was a diplomat who rose to be Louis’ Foreign Minister, while the Count de Fiesque became an ambassador to Spain.

Bizarrely enough, Madame Paula de Lionne seems at the time to have been famous less for her love affairs (although one source comments casually that both she and her husband were “well-known” for their respective extramarital adventures) than as the mother of Artus de Lionne, a priest and missionary who was one of the first Vicars Apostolic of Szechwan (Sichuan) – though he never went to Sichuan – and later Bishop of Rosalie in Turkey, who in China became embroiled in the so-called “Chinese Rites controversy”, a dispute over whether rituals performed by the Chinese to honour their ancestors were religious in nature, and therefore against Catholic doctrine. The Jesuits felt that the rites were secular and consequently tolerable, whereas the Dominicans and Franciscans opposed this view. Madame de Lionne herself entered the controversy, publishing Lettre de madame de Lionne aux Jesuites in 1701, which received support from Bernardino della Chiesa, the Bishop of Peking (Lettre à madame de Lionne, sur le libelle des Jesuites, contre M. l’évêque de Rosalie, son fils). In fact it seems that the alleged “persecution” of de Lionne by the Jesuits was largely a fabrication to weaken their position in the controversy, and strengthen his own; although despite this the Pope finally ruled on the side of the Jesuits.

(Interesting if irrelevant factoid: a later Madame de Lionne appears in the story, The Duel, by Joseph Conrad, which became the basis for Ridley Scott’s debut feature film, The Duellists. It is at her salon that the quarrel is initiated which results in two young French officers fighting an unresolved series of duels carried out over the following fifteen years.)

But to return to the point—

Though it turns out that there is a measure of truth within both Gallantry Unmask’d and The History Of The Mareschalless De La Ferté – and though the “one extreme to the other” nature of these discoveries is making my head spin – I don’t see any point in ceasing to treat these work as fiction. Clearly they were intended simply to titillate, with some slandering of the French thrown in for good [sic.] measure.
 

 
On the left, the title page of Paula de Lionne’s protest against the Jesuits’ supposed mistreatment of her son. On the right, the title page of the response from the (Franciscan) Bishop of Peking.

 

 
On the left, an unattributed, annotated portrait of the d’Angennes sisters. The text reads (roughly): “Magdelaine D’Angennes, Maréchale De Lafferte Seneterre. Beautiful, and of good intentions, but whose conduct made the care of a clever husband not unnecessary; Catherine D’Angennes, Comtesse D’Olonne, the most famous beauty of her time, but less famous for the use she made of it.” As we gather from Émile Magne’s book about her, on the right.

 

 

My man Hugh

Some of you with extremely long memories for trivia may remember that I once did a short post referencing Hugh Walpole’s historical romance, Judith Paris. This is the second book in Walpole’s “Herries Chronicles”, a family saga stretching from Georgian times to contemporary England (Walpole was writing in the 20s and 30s), and is interesting for the way it tends to present English history away from the “big events” that dominate historical fiction: much of the third volume, The Fortress, for instance, is set during that most-neglected period between the Regency and the ascension of Victoria.

Another attraction of this series is its amusing use of literature—using the term “literature” a bit lightly. Walpole not only introduces various literary figures as characters, but his people tend to be readers of the more eclectic type. The One of the highlights for me of Judith Paris was a short scene in which two minor characters are reading a novel by my homegirl, Kitty Cuthbertson. (They didn’t like it, which only proves there’s no accounting for bad taste.)

I was delighted to discover that Walpole kept up his game of literary allusions in The Fortress—where yet again we meet a raft of characters who feel they should be reading poetry and other such serious works, but would rather curl up with a novel…

In Judith Paris, we were introduced to an incompetent tutor who kept his position by reading Minerva Press novels out loud to his employer, the foolish Jennifer Herries; here, the far shrewder Judith picks a better qualified man for her own son:

His passion was for Homer, and Adam owed that at at least—that the Iliad and the Odyssey were to be ever friendly companions to him because of Roger Rackstraw. He had a pretty sense too of the virtues of Virgil, Horace, Thucydides and the Greek dramatists, and could make them live under his fingers. He had a poor opinion of contemporary English Letters, although he said a good word for the Waverley romances and told everyone that there was a young poet, John Keats, who would be remembered. For Mr Wordsworth he had more praise than was locally considered reasonable, but when alone with a friend confessed that he thought Southey’s poetry ‘fustian’…

Possibly the reason that Roger “had a poor opinion of contemporary English Letters” is that he was living during the literary black hole which occurred between the death of Jane Austen and the arrival on the scene of William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens: a time when the void was chiefly filled by amusing but trivial Silver-Fork Novels. Judith sees this second-rate writing as the expression of a general malaise:

She saw that she was in a society where nothing was real, where nobody believed in anything at all, where everyone feared what the morrow would bring. The ‘Silver Fork’ novels of fashionable life, just then beginning to be popular, were symptomatic of the falsehood and sham, while cruel and malicious sheets like the Age and the John Bull of Theodore Hook showed where the rottenness was hidden…

(Hmm… She was in a society where nothing was real, where nobody believed in anything at all, where everyone feared what the morrow would bring— Is that why we have so many terrible movies at the moment?)

The young Uhland Herries has a crippled leg, and lives withdrawn from his family. Most people are frightened of Uhland (with good reason, as we shall learn), and even his father, Walter, who almost worships him, does not understand him—least of all his passion for reading:

    Uhland was reading Ivanhoe.
    “What a silly book, Papa!” he said. “I am certain that people never talked like that.”
    Walter placed his great bulk on the bed and put his arm round his son. Under Uhland’s nightdress there was a sharp rigid spine-bone that seemed to protest against the caressing warmth of Walter’s hand.
    “Why not, my boy?” said Walter, who had never read Ivanhoe. “Sir Walter Scott is a very great man.”
    “Have you ever read a book called Frankenstein, Papa?”
    “No, my boy.”
    “That’s better than this stuff. Frankenstein creates a Monster and cannot escape it. There is too much fine writing, however…”

(This is the earliest instance I know of, of a fictional character identifying with Frankenstein’s Creature, as I prefer to call him. As a grown man, Uhland will give in to the blackest side of his nature and persecute his cousin, John Herries, exactly as the Creature persecutes Frankenstein, for far less cogent but psychologically similar reasons.)

As a young woman, Uhland’s sister Elizabeth finds a post as governess, but discovers that (as with the incompetent tutor) she is also expected to entertain her pupils’ mother:

Mrs Golightly enjoyed entertaining her friends in the evening…but perhaps more than anything else she enjoyed sitting with her toes in front of the fire of an evening and listening to Elizabeth’s reading of a novel. The original inquiry at the Agency about the Poets had been genuine enough, but when it came actually to reading—well, the novel was the thing! Elizabeth had a beautiful, quiet, cultivated voice, as Mrs Golightly told all her friends. It was a pleasure indeed to listen to her. So Elizabeth read, night after night, from the works of Bulwer, Ainsworth, that delightful new writer Charles Dickens, Theodore Hook, Mrs Gore, Miss Austen (“a little dull, my love—not enough Event”) and even some of the old Minerva Press’ romances—Mandroni, Ronaldo Rinaldini and The Beggar Girl And Her Benefactors, the last in seven volumes…

Meanwhile, Adam Paris grows up to be first a literary critic, and then an author of fantasy stories:

    “There are two sorts of writers, Mother, just as there are two sorts of Herries. One sort believes in facts, the other sort believes in things behind the facts.”
    “The books I like best,” she answered, “are those that have both sorts in them.”
    “For instance?”
    “Jane is reading me a very amusing story called Under Two Flags. It’s silly, of course—not like real life at all—but most enjoyable. And then there’s Alice In Wonderland. And then there’s Mr Huxley’s Man’s Place In Nature.”
    Adam laughed. “Mother, what a ridiculous mixture!”
    “They all come to the same thing in the end.”
    “What thing?”
    “The world is made up both of fantasy and reality, I suppose…”

As these passages illustrate, Walpole uses his characters’ reading not only to reveal their natures – here, the many contradictions of Judith – but to mark the passage of time and the changing of society: the events of The Fortress covering the years between 1822 and 1870 and climaxing with Judith reaching her 100th birthday.

But there’s one more literary passage in The Fortress that I must highlight, and—well, let’s just say that my man Hugh didn’t let me down:

They had never been to Uldale before on a visit, and this was a great adventure. ‘Madame’ was a ‘character’ through the whole countryside, and it was wonderful to be entertained in her parlour. Or was it Mrs Herries’ parlour? People said that she was mad and walked about the country singing songs to herself—mad, poor thing, because her husband had discovered her with her lover and he had killed himself. Very shocking, but how romantic! And then her son John was so handsome, the best-looking young man in the North, a little sad and pensive as a good-looking young man ought to be. For they adored Thaddeus Of Warsaw and Mrs Cuthbertson’s Santo Sebastiano and Mrs Meeke’s Midnight Weddings…

Gillray vs the Gunnings

By the late 1780s, James Gillray was England’s leading political satirist. His caricatures, prepared as prints and etchings, were enormously popular and demonstrably capable of influencing public opinion. It is of note, however, that Gillray rarely took sides; or rather, he would satirise both sides of any given issues—for example, caricaturing both George III and the Prince of Wales, or presenting William Pitt as either a hero or a villain, according to whether his topic was international or domestic. Gillray’s work was heavily influenced by that of William Hogarth, and in addition to politics per se he produced any number of confronting images about various grim realities of contemporary life, often opposing the excesses and immorality of the upper classes with the miseries of the poor. The third stream of his work, the one that most concerns us at the moment, finds its subject matter in the scandals of the time.

“The Gunning Mystery“, as it was called, inspired Gillray to three different caricatures. The one which we have already highlighted, The Siege Of Blenheim; or, A New System Of Gunning Discovered, not only combines outrageous images and obscene jokes (“Mother, mother, my masked battery is discovered!” exclaims the spraddle-legged and obviously underwear-free Elizabeth Gunning), but is an example of Gillray’s habit of presenting both sides of an issue. Although the Gunnings were the main target, the barrage of faeces emanating from Blenheim Castle is an acknowledgement that many people believed that the Duke of Marlborough or his son, Lord Blandford, were not as innocent as they claimed. Meanwhile, the reverses suffered at this time by the British army, widely blamed upon a corrupt and incompetent command, are referenced in the words given to John Gunning, as he slinks away from the scene of his family’s disgrace: “I find our Stratagem won’t take effect, & therefore I’ll be off; & manoeuvre;—any common Soldier can lead on, to any attack, but it takes the skill of a General to bring off his forces with honour after a defeat…”

The Siege Of Blenheim is a comparatively straightforward effort. Far less so is another of James Gillray’s attacks upon the Gunnings, which ties them to an earlier 18th century scandal. In my post addressing Dan Cruickshank’s The Secret History Of Georgian London, we touched briefly upon the bizarre story of Elizabeth Canning, who in 1753 claimed to have been kidnapped and forced into prostitution, but who was eventually proved to have made up the whole story. In Betty Canning Reviv’d, Gillray recasts the Canning scandal with members of the Gunning family; beyond the sheer similarity of the names “Elizabeth Canning” and “Elizabeth Gunning”, both scandals involved a young woman of good family solemnly swearing to the truth of their version of events and then being proved a liar. Betty Canning Reviv’d is an example of Gillray’s more complex humour, not only requiring people to understand the connection he was making, but to spot the various subtle visual details scattered around his image. The signpost to Blenhein in the background is clear enough, but in addition we have such touches as Elizabeth Gunning kissing a deck of cards instead of a bible as she swears an oath. My favourite detail, however, is the presence of a copy of that best-selling novel, “Waltham Abbey by Peg Niffy”.

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This particular caricature introduces into the Gunning scandal Margaret Minifie, the sister and aunt respectively of Susannah and Elizabeth Gunning: that’s her on the far right in Betty Canning Reviv’d. She is even more prominent in Gillray’s third Gunning caricature. Here again he works the Gunnings into a different context, in this case referencing “Margaret’s Ghost”, a popular ballad from the first half of the century about a young woman who dies of a broken heart, and then appears as a ghost to reproach her lover with his broken promises and false oaths. In Margaret’s Ghost, Elizabeth Gunning’s “Auntee Peg” comes to break the terrible news that “Dishonourable-infamous-false-accusations” have been made against the three of them.

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I have been unable to come up with any specific reason why people were so convinced that Margaret Minifie was involved in the plot of the forged letters…which makes me wonder whether the rapidity with which the public seized upon the three women as the perpetrators of the forgery was that all three of them were novelists?

If this is true, we can understand why Susannah Gunning might have felt she had to defend herself by denying that she was guilty of the heinous crime of novel-writing…although the sad reality is, her doing so certainly made things worse, and not better, for herself, her daughter and her sister—besides confirming all Society’s worst suspicions about women who write.

The first novel to emanate from the Minifie household was The Histories Of Lady Frances S—, And Lady Caroline S—, which was published in 1763. Below is the title page.

How on earth could she think she’d get away with it?

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If I might Meekely interject…

Sigh…

I wonder if you guys are as tired of me starting my blog posts with an apology for my absence and/or unanswered comments as I am of starting them that way? But here we are again… I have an ambition, which is rapidly escalating into the realm of delusion, that at some stage I will be able to settle into a posting routine and be updating here about once a fortnight; but every time it begins to look like I might approach that particular asymptote, ill health, work horrors and/or computer issues start to interfere. I don’t know why the blogging gods hate me so; I only know they do… [*sniff*]

Anyway—after a more than usually painful period of cosmic intervention (involving ill health, work horrors and computer issues), I set myself to the task of getting things rolling again by resurrecting one of the more neglected corners of this blog, Authors In Depth, and by returning to the first author to feature in that category, the Minerva Press mainstay, Mrs Meeke…only to discover that in the interim, something in the nature of a revolution had occurred.

Early in 2013, academic Simon Macdonald published an essay in which he challenged the longstanding identification of “Mrs Meeke” as Mary Meeke, the wife of the Reverend Francis Meeke, a minor poet. Macdonald contends that the Minerva Press novelist was in fact one Elizabeth Meeke, whose full name appears in a catalogue for the publisher from 1798.

The fact that there was an “Elizabeth Meeke” on the Minerva Press’s roster of novelists is not a new discovery. This point was raised in a 1946 issue of that wonderfully peculiar journal, Notes And Queries, with the contributor referencing that same piece of Minerva Press publicity. What Simon Macdonald has done is identify and trace the life of the woman who could be the elusive Mrs Meeke. If Macdonald’s scholarship concerned only the identity of a minor 18th century novelist, perhaps only people who share my arcane tastes would be interested; but the academic community sat up and paid attention when it was revealed that Elizabeth Meeke was the step-sister of Fanny Burney.

Briefly, according to Macdonald’s account, the woman in question was born Elizabeth Allen; she became a de facto member of the Burney family when her widowed mother married Dr Charles Burney. When she was only fifteen, Elizabeth ran away with the much-older Samuel Meeke and, after an awkward delay, finally acquired the right to call herself “Mrs Meeke”. The marriage was not happy, and after various episodes of separation and reconciliation (and hints of the wife’s involvement with another man), there was a permanent break. Burney family letters suggest ongoing misbehaviour on the part of Elizabeth, who for a time seems to have gone under the assumed name of “Mrs Bruce”. She later married again, to a man called Rawlings, but this marriage was no more successful than her first.

Between 1795 and 1823 there appeared a remarkable number of novels, translations and children’s books which have been attributed to “Mrs Meeke”. Most of the novels carried the name “Mrs Meeke” (no first name) on the title page; others appeared under the pseudonym “Gabrielli”, still others were published anonymously. Macdonald suggests that “Gabrielli” was a reference to the Italian opera singer, Catarina Gabrielli, whose London Performance was attended by the Burney family, as their letters attest. He also points out that the first “Gabrielli” novel, The Mysterious Wife, is dedicated to Mrs Arthur Young (Arthur Young was an agricultural economist, active in the area of agricultural workers’ rights); Martha Young, née Allen, was Elizabeth Allen’s maternal aunt.

Now—if all of this is so, it begs the question of where the alternative identification of “Mrs Meeke” as Mary Meeke came from: a question not at all easy to answer. Those modern writers who have taken notice of Mrs Meeke (and they are not numerous) draw upon three sources:

Published in 1812, Robert Watt’s Bibliotheca Britannica; or, A General Index Of British And Foreign Literature has only this to say upon the subject:

MEEKE, Mrs, a prolific Writer of Novels…

Four years later, A Biographical Dictionary Of The Living Authors Of Great Britain And Ireland offered a slightly more expansive (and rather tongue-in-cheek) listing:

MEEKE, Mrs, one of the numerous family of novelists whose prolific genius is always labouring to increase the stock of the circulating libraries. Her performances are— [list follows]

In 1885, the Dictionary Of National Biography (edited first by Sir Leslie Stephen, later by Sidney Lee) has rather more to say about Mrs Meeke, and is in fact the source of almost everything we thought we knew about her:

    MEEKE, Mrs MARY (d. 1816?), novelist, seems to have been the wife of the Rev. Francis Meeke (B. A. Christ’s College, Cambridge, 1773, and M. A., 1776), who published a volume of poems in 1782 (Notes And Queries, 3rd ser. ii. 229). She began her prolific career as a novelist in 1795, when she published ‘Count St. Blancard‘ in 3 vols., and continued her labours for more than twenty years. In October 1816 there died, at Johnson Hall, Staffordshire, Mary, the widow of the Rev. Francis Meeke, who may perhaps be identified with the novelist.
    Mrs Meeke naively recommends novelists, before planning a work, to consult their publisher as to how they may best satisfy the prevailing public taste (Midnight Weddings, pref.). Personally, she apparently followed this plan with some success. Although her plots are commonplace, and her literary style poor, and her characters only faintly reflect contemporary manners, she had some distinguished readers. Macaulay ‘all but knew’, Lady Trevelyan writes, ‘Mrs Meeke’s romances by heart’, but, despite his liking for them, he relegated Mrs Meeke to the position of his favourite among the bad novel-writers, and agreed in his sister’s criticism that ‘that they were one just like another, turning on the fortunes of some young man in a very low rank in life who eventually proves to be the son of a duke.’ (TREVELYAN, Life Of Macaulay, vol. i.) Miss Mitford was also a reader of Mrs Meeke’s works in her youth, and in her old age re-read at least six of them (Notes And Queries, 7th ser. vii. 405).
    The titles of the novels published under her own name (all in 3 vols. unless otherwise stated) are— [list follows] Probably posthumously published were— [list follows]
    Mrs Meeke also translated from the French— [list follows] In 1811 she completed the translation by Mrs Collyer (q. v.) of Klopstock’s ‘Messiah‘ (another edition 1821).
    Mrs Meeke has been identified with the writer who assumed the pseudonym of Gabrielli (Notes And Queries, 2nd ser. i. 133) and published— [list follows] 

I’ve said this before, but it bears stressing— Pegging Mrs Meeke as a “bad novel-writer” on the strength of Lord Macaulay’s comments is misinterpreting what he meant. In the first place he was clearly sharing a joke with his sister, Lady Treveleyan, when he remarked that, “My tastes are, I fear, incurably vulgar, as you may perceive by my fondness for Mrs. Meeke’s novels.” When that remark is read in context, however, Macaulay is actually comparing Mrs Meeke’s novels to a satisfying, old-fashioned English dinner; he condemned his own tastes as “vulgar” because he was unable to enjoy the prevailing fashion for dinners comprised of elaborate but unsatisfying dishes. Furthermore, in another letter Macaulay comments that when he read a novel he didn’t enjoy, he would then re-read one of Mrs Meeke’s as a palette-cleanser. None of this proves she was a good writer, of course, but at least it indicates that she was entertaining.

But to return to the question of attribution— Note the hesitation in the Dictionary Of National Biography‘s identification of Mrs Meeke as Mary Meeke, wife of the Reverend Francis Meeke: she ‘seems to have been’ and ‘may perhaps be identified’ as such. Clearly, this was no more than someone’s best guess which, in the absence of any suggestion to the contrary, was allowed to pass unchallenged (that question in Notes And Queries excepted), and to become accepted as fact.

Simon Macdonald’s research does seem to establish that Elizabeth Meeke was at least the author of the “Gabrielli” novels. My remaining doubts focus on the question of why some of the novels attributed to Mrs Meeke were published under a pseudonym in the first place, and why others seem to have been published anonymously. Macdonald suggests that the “Gabrielli” pseudonym was adopted to avoid oversaturating the marketplace with novels by “Mrs Meeke”, but I’m not sure I’m persuaded by that argument. Consider the implications of that remark from A Biographical Dictionary Of The Living Authors Of Great Britain And Ireland, about novelists “labouring to increase the stock of the circulating libraries”: given the Minerva Press’s position as a leading supplier of such fodder, would the publisher really have been concerned about producing too many novels?

It was my hunt for a copy of 1797’s The Mysterious Wife, the first of the “Gabrielli” novels, that led me into these murky waters in the first place. This is the fourth of the novels attributed to “Mrs Meeke”, after Count St. Blancard (1795), The Abbey Of Clugny (1796) and Palmira And Ermance (1797); it doesn’t seem likely to me that after three novels in three years, William Lane would have started worrying about “saturation”. What’s more, having now read The Mysterious Wife, I have to say that I’m not convinced that it was written by the same person. In fact, I found myself wondering whether the root of the confusion could possibly be that the Minerva Press had ended up with two authors on its hands called “Mrs Meeke”, and had allowed one to keep her name while the other published anonymously or pseudonymously.

Now—I admit that I was very conscious of this controversy while I was reading, and that it is entirely possible I was consequently reading with a bias. And there are certain points of comparison between this work and the earlier ones, chiefly that it is set partly in France, and that it separates its hero and heroine for a very long stretch of the narrative. It does not feature a baby substitution per se, but it does have a young man raised under a false name (the better to facilitate a little trust-fund embezzlement) who later succeeds to a title. It also has a strong streak of anti-Catholicism, but that, in English novels of the late 18th century, is hardly diagnostic.

On the other hand, whereas the earlier novels doggedly refuse to acknowledge that the French Revolution ever happened, The Mysterious Wife opens with a statement placing its action “some years” before that epoch. Its action is divided between France and England, with both good people and bad people representing each nation. Most significantly, the novel focuses upon a marriage contracted for wholly “romantic” reasons, and – after, admittedly, looking for some time like it was going to do the opposite – it ultimately vindicates romantic love (in conjunction with “virtue”) as a basis for marriage over prudential motives; as opposed to the stance of Palmira And Ermance, which supported arranged marriages and severely punished a young woman led astray by romantic yearnings. The Mysterious Wife also features a French Marquis, the last of his name, who has never married because he has never fallen in love.

However, the main reason I feel that The Mysterious Wife may have been written by a different author from the earlier novels is its style—or lack thereof. Put simply, The Mysterious Wife is poorly written, being full of grammatical errors, whereas the earlier novels were not. It is also rather dull, with very little happening over the course of its four volumes. The previous three novels by “Mrs Meeke”, in contrast, though no-one would ever mistake them for great literature, are if anything absurdly over-plotted, with much of their entertainment value lying in their constant twists and turns and the various revelations of secret identity. I can imagine re-reading the first three novels and enjoying them again; once I’ve reviewed The Mysterious Wife, I’ll be putting it aside for good.

Of course, none of this proves anything. The Mysterious Wife may just be a bad novel because it’s a bad novel; perhaps because it was written in haste, not because it was written by a different person (although that argues against the “oversaturation” theory). And perhaps its different philosophy simply reflects the greater freedom of a pseudonym. Certainly I have no real evidence one way or the other—but I will be keeping all this in mind as I move forward through the novels of “Mrs Meeke”, “Gabrielli”, and that most prolific of authors, “Anonymous”.