The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza HaywoodWhicher, George Frisbie
General
The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood
Whicher, George Frisbie
Haywood, Eliza Fowler, 1693?-1756
Still in pursuit of her lover, Clementina on Montelupe meets the funeral
of a young woman who had been torn to pieces by wolves. The chief
mourner proves to be Glencairn. She is hindered in an attempt to stab
him and thrown into prison, where he visits her and disarms her
resentment by offering to marry her. After the ceremony they proceed to
Paris where each plunges into dissipation. Finally they separate,
Clementina dies of a fever, and the Baron is left free to pursue his
inclinations through a possible third part, which, however, was never
written.
After a slumber of forty years "The Agreeable Caledonian" was reprinted,
as the "Monthly Review" informs us, from a copy corrected by Mrs.
Haywood not long before her death.[16] The review continues, "It is like
the rest of Mrs. Haywood's novels, written in a tawdry style, now
utterly exploded; the romances of these days being reduced much nearer
the standard of nature, and to the manners of the living world." Realism
is, indeed, far to seek in the brief but intricate tissue of incidents
that made the novel of 1728. To a taste accustomed to "Sir Charles
Grandison," and "Peregrine Pickle," and "The Sentimental Journey" the
rehash of Eliza Haywood's novel must have seemed very far even from the
manners of the world of fiction. The judgment of the "Critical Review"
was still more savage in its accuracy.[17] "This is a republication of a
dull, profligate Haywoodian production, in which all the males are
rogues, and all the females whores, without a glimpse of plot, fable, or
sentiment." In its uncompromising literalness the critic's verdict ranks
with the learned Ascham's opinion of the "Morte D'Arthur,"--except that
it has not been superseded. The same animadversion might be urged
against Defoe's "Colonel Jacque" or "The Fortunate Mistress." If Mrs.
Haywood sinned against the standards of the age to come, she was not out
of touch with the spirit of her own generation.
As a writer she knew but one unfailing recipe for popularity: whatever
she touched must be forthwith gilded with passion. The chief _raison
d'être_ for "The Fair Hebrew: or, a True, but Secret History of Two
Jewish Ladies, Who lately resided in London" (1729) was to gratify the
prejudices of anti-Semitic readers, yet it is hardly distinguishable
from her sentimental love stories.
The young and gay Dorante, going to the synagogue for a lark, is tempted
by the sight of a fair hand to break into the woman's apartment and to
expose himself to the charms of the beautiful Kesiah. He engages her in
a correspondence, but at their first interview she gives him clearly to
understand that he can gain nothing from her but by marriage. Driven by
his unhappy passion, he complies with her demand, and she becomes a
Church of England woman. But once married, Kesiah is too proud to permit
the concealment that prudence demands. Though his father is sure to
disinherit them, she insists upon revealing the marriage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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