Pamela Andrews is the very soul of humility; but young as she is, she knows the business facts concerning the life contract--“with all my worldly goods I thee endow.” She knows that her master is a rake and scoundrel--he gives her in the course of the story all possible evidence of that; nevertheless, she stands firm, and in the end her virtue is rewarded--by marriage with this rake and scoundrel. If that seems to you a strange reward of virtue, it will be only because you do not understand this eighteenth century world. What a man is personally counts for little compared with the class he belongs to. He is a gentleman, he owns houses and lands, and Pamela’s children will be ladies and gentlemen, and will own houses and lands. This novel became the sensation of the day, not merely in England, but all over Europe. There were two large volumes, and a sequel with two more, but no one was bored; great ladies sat up half the night, weeping their eyes red over Pamela’s trials, and welcoming her--in imagination--into the class of ladies. The writers learned how to make money, and a new profession, that of the love-describers, came into being. CHAPTER XLVIII THE GOOD FELLOW’S CODE You will note in this bourgeois world two attitudes toward money; one might be described as the attitude of the first generation, and the other of the third. The first generation has had to make the money, and knows what money costs. The third generation wants the money just as much, but its knowledge is confined to what money will buy. There is war between these two generations, and you find it reflected in the arts; the young and saucy artists make propaganda for one side, while the mature and sober artists make it for the other. There was in England at this time a gentleman whose ancestors had had money for a long time, and who took toward it the attitude of jolly good heartedness. He read this story of “Pamela,” and it filled him with fury; what a loathsome world, in which, men and women spent their time poring over cash-books and calling it virtue! What would be left in life if a fashionable young gentleman could not have fun with a lower class girl without tying himself to her for life! So Henry Fielding, gentleman, barrister, and man of pleasure in London, sat himself down to turn “Pamela” into screaming farce. He took Pamela’s brother, a young footman, and pictured him in the household of a great lady who endeavored to lure him from the path of virtue. The agonies of temptation of Joseph Andrews reproduced those of his sister; but as young men were not supposed to have any virtue, the tragedy was turned upside down.