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
The scribbling dame again used the feigned letter as a vehicle for
mildly infamous gossip in "Letters from the Palace of Fame. Written by a
First Minister in the Regions of Air, to an Inhabitant of this World.
Translated from an Arabian Manuscript."[21] Its pretended source and the
sham Oriental disguise make the work an unworthy member of that group of
feigned Oriental letters begun by G.P. Marana with "L'Espion turc" in
1684, continued by Dufresny and his imitator, T. Brown, raised to a
philosophic level by Addison and Steele, and finally culminant in
Montesquieu's "Lettres Persanes" (1721) and Goldsmith's "Citizen of the
World" (1760).[22] The fourth letter is a well-told Eastern adventure,
dealing with the revenge of Forzio who seduces the wife of his enemy,
Ben-hamar, through the agency of a Christian slave, but in general the
"Letters" are valuable only as they add an atom of evidence to the
popularity of pseudo-Oriental material. Eliza Haywood was anxious to
give the public what it wanted. She had found a ready market for
scandal, and knew that the piquancy of slander was enhanced and the
writer protected from disagreeable consequences if her stories were cast
in some sort of a disguise. She had already used the obvious ruse of an
allegory in the "Memoirs of a Certain Island" and had just completed a
feigned history in the "Court of Carimania." The well known "Turkish
Spy" and its imitations, or perhaps the recent but untranslated "Lettres
Persanes," may have suggested to her the possibility of combining bits
of gossip in letters purporting to be translated from the Arabic and
written by some supermundane being. The latter part of the device had
already been used by Defoe in "The Consolidator." Mrs. Haywood merely
added the suggestion of a mysterious Oriental source. She makes no
attempt to satirize contemporary society, but is content to retail vague
bits of town talk to customers who might be deluded into imagining them
of importance. "The new created Vizier," the airy correspondent reports,
"might have succeeded better in another Post, than in this, which with
so much earnestness he has sollicited. For, notwithstanding the Plaudits
he has received from our Princess, and the natural Propensity to
State-Affairs, given him by his Saturnine Genius; his Significator Mars
promis'd him greater Honours in the Field, than he can possibly attain
to in the Cabinet." And so on. Both "Bath-Intrigues" and "Letters from
the Palace of Fame" may be classed as _romans à clef_ although no "key"
for either has yet been found. In all other respects they conform to
type.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account