The Masqueraders, or Fatal Curiosity, and The Surprize, or Constancy Rewarded 9781442669208

Citation preview

The Masqueraders, or Fatal Curiosity and The Surprize, or Constancy Rewarded

This page intentionally left blank

Eliza Haywood

The Masqueraders, or Fatal Curiosity and

The Surprize, or Constancy Rewarded Edited by Tiffany Potter

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2015 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4426-4779-4 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4426-1587-8 (paper)  Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks. ______________________________________________________________________ Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Haywood, Eliza Fowler, 1693?–1756 [Novels. Selections] The masqueraders, or Fatal curiosity and The surprize, or Constancy rewarded / Eliza Haywood ; edited by Tiffany Potter. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-4426-4779-4 (bound).–ISBN 978-1-4426-1587-8 (paperback) I. Potter, Tiffany, 1967– editor II. Haywood, Eliza Fowler, 1693–1756. Masqueraders. III. Haywood, Eliza Fowler, 1693–1756. Surprize. IV. Title. PR3506.H94A6 2015    823′.5    C2015-904022-1 ______________________________________________________________________ This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

   Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement du Canada of Canada

an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario

For Sloane

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

illustrationsix acknowledgmentsx a note on the texts and publication historyxii editions of haywood’s novels compared for this editionxv

Introduction: Life in Excess: Eliza Haywood and Popular Culture in The Masqueraders and The Surprize3 The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity61 The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity. Part II103 The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded129 Appendix A: Contemporary Comments on Eliza Haywood162 James Sterling, “To Mrs. Eliza Haywood on her Writings”

162

Richard Savage, “To Mrs. Eliza Haywood, on her Novel, call’d Love In Excess, &c.”164 Anonymous, “To the most Ingenious Mrs. Haywood, on her Novel, entitled, Love in Excess.”

165

Anonymous, “Verses wrote in the Blank Leaf of Mrs. Haywood’s Novel.”165

viii

Contents

Richard Savage, “To Mrs. Eliza Haywood, on her Novel, call’d the Rash Resolve” (1724)

166

Richard Savage, The Authors of the Town; A Satire (excerpt) (1725)

168

Anonymous, Letter to The Ladies Journal (1727)

168

Appendix B: Documents from the Masquerade Debate170 Weekly Journal, Description of a Masquerade Ball (1718)

170

Edmund Gibson, Lord Bishop of London, “Sermon Preached to the Societies for the Reformation of Manners,” excerpt from reprinting in An Essay on Plays and Masquerades (1724)

171

Anonymous, The Ball. Stated in a Dialogue betwixt a Prude and a Coquet. Last Masquerade Night, the 12th of May (1724)

172

bibliography179

Illustrations

1 George Vertue, after James Parmentier. Mrs. Eliza Haywood (ca 1725). By permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London. NPG D13931 2 William Hogarth. Masquerades and Operas (1723). Courtesy of La Clé des langues (Clifford Armion, dir.) and ENS Media (Vincent Brault, photo) 3 Anonymous. The World in Masquerade (1720). © Trustees of the British Museum. 2004,0331.1 4 Giuseppe Grisoni. Masquerade on the Stage of the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket (1724). © Victoria and Albert Museum 5 William Hogarth. Masquerade Ticket (1727). Courtesy of La Clé des langues (Clifford Armion, dir.) and ENS Media (Vincent Brault, photo) 6 Anonymous. Miss Chudley, Maid of Honour to the Princess of Wales, in the character of Iphigenia at the Italian Masquerade in ye Daytime at Ranelagh Gardens in June 1749 (1749). © Trustees of the British Museum 7 Henry Morland. The Fair Nun Unmask’d (ca 1770). Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University 8 Title Page. The Masqueraders, or Fatal Curiosity (1724) 9 Title Page. The Surprize, or Constancy Rewarded (1724)

53 54 55 56 57

58 59 62 130

Acknowledgments

Many thanks are due to the many people who contributed to the creation of this edition. First, however, I wish to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for supporting my research for this volume, funded as part of a larger project on women and popular culture in the eighteenth century. I am grateful to my students at the University of British Columbia, whose excitement about this text – even in blotchy photocopies of eighteenth-century editions – led me to pursue a scholarly edition that could also be used in classrooms. Students in second-year courses showed me the novels’ teachable qualities, students in third-year courses illuminated my sense of the texts, and students in my seminars and courses on eighteenth-century popular culture engaged in analysis that let me see what I had not seen before. To all of them I offer thanks; in particular, I wish to acknowledge the work of undergraduate students Jacqueline Tiplady, Jessica Tung, and Natasha Kim, each of whom contributed an original annotation to this edition. My first research assistant, Eve Preus, took on the labours of transcription with grace and attention to detail; my second research assistant, Alayna Becker, is a model of breathtaking efficiency and scholarly accuracy, and I thank her especially for her work in cracking several complex nuts of annotation and identification. I wish also to thank Jo Maddocks at the British Library for her work in the bibliographic assessment of the possible fourth edition of Haywood’s Masqueraders in their collection. For permission to reproduce the illustrations in this volume, I thank the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Trustees of the British Museum, and La Clé des langues. At the University of Toronto Press, Richard Ratzlaff has been an endless source of good counsel and encouragement who deserves his own page of acknowledgments.

Acknowledgments

 xi 

In the final phases of production, the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript offered many helpful suggestions, and I appreciate their careful reading and insights. In addition, I am grateful for the generosity of two leaders in Haywood scholarship: Haywood’s political biographer Kathryn King was instrumental in determining with confidence the identity of Lady Lucy Price, to whom Haywood dedicated Part II of The Masqueraders; and bibliographer Patrick Spedding commented on my “Note on the Text” and shared his own transcription of The Masqueraders against which to check my own. I offer thanks to you both. Any errors that remain are, alas, my own. Finally, as always, I owe the greatest thanks of all to my husband, Ken Madden, and my daughter, Sloane, to whom this volume is dedicated.

A Note on the Texts and Publication History

This edition takes as its source texts the first edition of each of the three publications: The Masqueraders (1724), The Surprize (1724), and The Masqueraders Part II (1725). Eighteenth-century popular texts, including many texts by women writers, were often issued in a single, hastily printed edition; these are, nevertheless, also often the only ones in which the author was directly involved.1 In choosing to use the first editions for all three novels, I seek to offer a uniform structure for their consideration in a consistent publication context. This edition replicates original spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. I have corrected only obvious errors of typesetting, and I have indicated those emendations in the notes. For each novel, all of the available extant editions have been compared and variants noted. Given eighteenth-­century typesetting, there are hundreds of minor variations of punctuation, spacing, and spelling among all of the editions, and annotating all of them would have made for an unwieldy volume. However, variations that could affect implication or interpretation have been documented in the notes, using reference to the year of publication for clarity in quick reference. In the list that follows this note, Patrick Spedding’s bibliographical enumeration has been replicated; those seeking full bibliographical documentation for each edition and printing should see Spedding’s meticulous 2004 bibliography.

1 Patrick Spedding notes, for example, that despite the advertisements of Secret Histories, Novels and Poems (Aa.3.1) as “‘the 2d Edition corrected’ … there is no evidence that any texts were revised or ‘corrected’ in any way for SNHP” (67). Note that unless indicated otherwise, all references to Spedding are to his 2004 Bibliography of Eliza Haywood.

A Note on the Texts and Publication History

 xiii 

As is true of many eighteenth-century publications, the print history of The Surprize and the two parts of The Masqueraders is complex. There are, however, consistencies among the first editions: based upon the ornaments used on the title pages, Spedding suggests that all three were printed by Henry Woodfall, under the imprint of trade publisher J. Roberts.2 Spedding provides evidence that the copyright to all three was held by Samuel Chapman and Daniel Browne junior. The first edition of The Masqueraders was published in April of 1724; Spedding documents advertisements for second, third, and fourth editions, and notes that “there is reason to believe that these editions were issued” (151), though he indicates that no surviving copies are reported. The British Library, however, does hold a copy with a title page naming it as the “Fourth Edition,” bound together with Ab.12.7b, the “Second Edition” of Part II (see note 4 below). Another edition was printed in Dublin in 1725 by Samuel Powell for George Ewing, and advertised as the 5th edition. The novel was reprinted in slightly variant versions in editions of the collection of Haywood’s work titled Secret Histories, Novels and Poems in 1725, 1732, and 1742. ESTC currently lists four extant copies of The Masqueraders held by public institutions. The Masqueraders Part II was published in January 1725, and reissued as a “second edition” by March of 1725, with only a stop-press alteration to the title page in the “second” edition. Five copies are listed by ESTC, but Part II was not included in the Secret Histories. The Surprize was published between the two parts of The Masqueraders, in July of 1724. and two copies are publicly held. A second edition was advertised in September 1724, though no surviving copies are reported. The Surprize was included in all editions of Secret Histories. What were numbered as the four editions of Secret Histories, Novels and Poems appear actually to begin with the “second edition” printed for Daniel Browne junior and Samuel Chapman in 1725; no copies survive

2 The trade publisher listed for the first editions of all three of the novels reproduced here, “J. Roberts in Warwick Lane,” provided the imprint under which most of Haywood’s early shorter works were published, and also offered works by Daniel Defoe, Richard Steele, and Robert Walpole between 1713 and 1737. According to Robert Chambers, Roberts also “issued the majority of the squibs and libels on Pope” (I. 280). Roberts has been identified as both James and John, but both names appear to refer to the same individual, as only one bookseller named Roberts is associated with this location in the 1720s. Roberts took over the work of William Chetwood (the first publisher associated with Haywood and a part of her literary theatrical circle) when Chetwood began his career as Drury Lane’s prompter in 1722 (Ingrassia 190n18).

xiv

A Note on the Texts and Publication History

of a first edition. Spedding notes the possibility that there was a first edition that was simply “read out of existence” (66), but the fact that more than a dozen copies survive of each of the other editions makes this seem unlikely. A second possibility is that the 1724 four-volume collected works titled The Works of Mrs Eliza Haywood printed in London by Browne and Chapman was counted as a first edition, as seven of the twelve texts printed in Secret Histories were also included in the four-volume Works. Spedding suggests instead, however, that no first edition of Secret Histories was likely printed at all, and that after several months of advertisements for an edition that was delayed, the “publishers were simply trying to generate some interest in their newly published collection by distinguishing it from the long-awaited, but never-published, first edition of SHNP” (66). Though none of The Masqueraders, The Masqueraders Part II or The Surprize was included in the 1725 Works, the first part of The Masqueraders appears in volume 4 and The Surprize in volume 3 in all of the editions of Secret Histories. Secret Histories appears to have been a successful publication: ESTC lists 13 copies of the 1725 “second” edition as currently publicly held; 11 copies of the 1732 third edition; and 14 copies of the 1742 fourth edition.

Editions of Haywood’s Novels Compared for This Edition3

The Masqueraders Ab.12.1 The Masqueraders, or Fatal Curiosity: Being the Secret History of a Late Amour. London: J. Roberts. 1724. Ab.12.5 Fourth edition.4 London: J. Roberts. 1725.

3 The enumeration of editions here follows that of Spedding’s bibliography. See Spedding for full bibliographic information, including detail on editions and printings of which no known copy survives. 4 Spedding notes that “the ‘Second’, ‘Third’, and ‘Fourth’ editions [of the first part of The Masqueraders] are known only from advertisements but there is reason to believe that these editions were issued” (Spedding 151). The British Library, however, does hold a copy with a title page naming it as the “Fourth Edition,” bound together with Ab.12.7b, the “Second Edition” of Part II (actually a reissue of the first edition, on evidence of repetition of typographical errors). This edition was acquired by the British Library after the publication of Spedding’s Bibliography (BL 1568/6577). Although both were published in the same year, the two parts are priced separately: the first part on the title page (“Price One Shilling”), and Part II at the foot of the half-title (“Price 1 s.”). As the binding is modern paper-covered board, it is not possible to say when the two parts were brought together: the two parts do not appear to be conjoined by the stitching which holds each part together, and Part II has discolouration on the half-title which suggests that it has not always been bound second in a volume. The evidence of this copy supports Spedding’s sense that the two parts were not, in fact, published together, though the advertisement implies that they were (152).

xvi

Editions of Haywood’s Novels Compared for This Edition

Ab. 12.6 Fifth edition. Dublin: Printed by S. Powell, for George Ewing. 1725. Aa.3.1 “The Masqueraders, or Fatal Curiosity.” Secret Histories, Novels and Poems. In Four Volumes. Written by Mrs. Eliza Haywood. 2ed. 4 vols. London: Dan. Browne jun. at the Black Swan without Temple Bar; and S. Chapman, at the Angel in Pall Mall. 1725. Vol. 4.5 Aa.3.2 Third edition. London: A. Bettesworth, and C. Hitch in Pater Noster Row; D. Browne, without Temple Bar; T. Astley in St. Paul’s Church Yard; and T. Green at Charing Cross. 1732. Vol. 4.6 Aa.3.3 Fourth edition. London: R. Ware, and Amen Corner; S. Birt, in Ave Mary Lane; D. Browne, without Temple Bar; C. Hitch in Pater-Noster-Row; and S. Austen, in St. Paul’s Churchyard. 1742. Vol. 4. The Masqueraders: Part II Ab.12.7a The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity: Being the Secret History of a Late Amour. Part II. London: J. Roberts. 1725. Ab.12.7b Second Edition7 London: J. Roberts. 1725.

5 This printing lists “second edition” on its title page, though Spedding notes that “[n]o copy of the first edition of Aa.3.0 SHNP survives and it is not clear whether such an edition was ever in fact published” (66). 6 The ESTC and Spedding agree that volume 4 of the 1732 edition was printed by Samuel Richardson. 7 As Spedding documents, though the title page names it a second edition, this printing is a second issue of the first edition, textually identical to the first edition but for the title page.

Editions of Haywood’s Novels Compared for This Edition

 xvii 

The Surprize Ab.14.1a The Surprize, or Constancy Rewarded. By the Author of The Masqueraders, or Fatal Curiosity. London: J. Roberts. 1724. Aa.3.1 “The Surprize; or, Constancy Rewarded.” Secret Histories, Novels and Poems. In Four Volumes. Written by Mrs. Eliza Haywood. 2ed. 4 vols. London: Dan. Browne jun. at the Black Swan without Temple Bar; and S. Chapman, at the Angel in Pall Mall. 1725. Vol. 3. Aa.3.2 Third edition. London: A. Bettesworth, and C. Hitch in Pater Noster Row; D. Browne, without Temple Bar; T. Astley in St. Paul’s Church Yard; and T. Green at Charing Cross. 1732. Vol. 3. Aa.3.3 Fourth edition. London: R. Ware, and Amen Corner; S. Birt, in Ave Mary Lane; D. Browne, without Temple Bar; C. Hitch in Paternoster Row; and S. Austen, in St. Paul’s Churchyard. 1742. Vol. 3.

This page intentionally left blank

THE MASQUERADERS, OR FATAL CURIOSITY THE MASQUERADERS, OR FATAL CURIOSITY. PART II AND THE SURPRIZE, OR CONSTANCY REWARDED

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction: Life in Excess: Eliza Haywood and Popular Culture in The Masqueraders and The Surprize

Eliza Haywood has become part of the canon of eighteenth-century British literature over the last two decades in a remarkably rapid movement from relative obscurity to a central position in the history of the novel. Even as Haywood’s novels are widely read by scholars and students, however, criticism of her work is still at times framed with caveats and slightly embarrassed notes on romance fiction as a genre that really is – really – just as important as the better-known and more conventionally valued novels that were published by the likes of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding in the decades following the height of Haywood’s fame and infamy in the 1720s. Participating in that tradition of romance fiction, the two-part The Masqueraders and The Surprize are both genuinely entertaining novels, published over the course of ten months in 1724 and 1725,1 but very nearly opposite to one another in their relationships to conventional morality and the social codes of the early eighteenth century. The Masqueraders2 is fairly typical of the sometimes salacious novels of pleasure that made Haywood’s name early in her career: a whirl of London life, with a libertine anti-hero and his serial seductions of women who believe that they can manipulate to their own benefit the social conventions that are expected to limit them. With one exception, those efforts at self-privileging fail, and the women suffer. The Surprize, on the other hand,

1 Newspaper advertisements announced the publication of The Masqueraders in April 1724 (The Daily Journal) and “the 2d Part” of The Masqueraders in January 1724/5 (The Daily Post). The Surprize was advertised in The Daily Journal in July 1724. 2 In this discussion, I will refer to The Masqueraders as a single text, published in two parts, referring to the parts by number only in specific instances where the distinction is necessary.

4

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

has much in common with what were long read as Haywood’s “reformed” novels of the 1740s and 1750s, most famously The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751). In The Surprize, two women work together to enable their own happy marriages to good men, and the hero is a man of sentiment who at one point must abandon his beloved to protect her from his status as economically undeserving of happiness. As in Haywood’s later, more respected and respectable novels, fate intervenes and the good and true are rewarded with love and money. Since the novel is dedicated to Sir Richard Steele, that famed promoter of moral sentiment, such virtue rewarded might seem appropriate, but it is certainly is not widely expected of the Haywood of 1724. Re-publishing these two novels together offers the opportunity for a much clearer sense of the nuance and variation of Haywood’s first period, so long dismissed as formulaic and repetitive.3 Despite their differences, The Masqueraders and The Surprize are connected not just by their dates of composition, but also by their use of the popular culture of London – particularly women’s gossip and fashions for masking and masquerade balls – as essential plot elements. On the narrative scale, the masquerade is both the site of the requisite seductions and dramatic confusion, and also the source of dramatic resolution and women’s empowerment. On a larger scale the masquerade is an important example of the social complexity of popular culture: masquerade was universally known, attended by disguised men and women (aristocrats, gentry, merchants, thieves, and prostitutes alike), and for those reasons, heatedly debated in popular media. As the opening sentence of The Masqueraders asserts, “Great-Britain has no Assembly which affords such variety of Characters as the Masquerade; there are scarce any Degrees of People, of what Religion or Principle so ever, that some time or other are not willing to embrace an opportunity 3 Haywood’s earliest advocate in modern scholarship, Mary Anne Schofield, for example, argued that the rapid pace of Haywood’s writing – “several times she wrote two or three novels in one month” – led to “great similarity among these tales of passion and intrigue” (Eliza Haywood 43; see also Schofield’s Masking and Unmasking the Female Mind). William B. Warner similarly opens his essay on novels and the market with the assertion that appropriately or not, “the novel of amorous intrigue … [had] been an embarrassment to most of the English literary history of the novel written since the late eighteenth century” (“Novels” 87). For another example of a description of Haywood’s work as repetitive and “formulaic,” see Richetti, English Novel. Beginning with Backscheider in 1999, however, an argument for the experimental nature of Haywood’s writing different versions of parallel plots has emerged. See also Anderson, “Performing the Passions.”

Introduction: Life in Excess

 5 

of partaking this Diversion.” Haywood puts the popular cultural product of the masquerade to work in an informative parallel to narrative fiction as the latest product of popular culture. Like the masquerade, Haywood’s early novels function as sites of cultural negotiation and contention, balancing the demands of profit, morality, fashion, and pleasure in a way that is informed by the same conventional notions of performance, class, and gender that her work also interrogates. Considering Haywood through the lens of popular culture helps to direct the reader away from any temptation to characterize her “as a hack-writer simply exploiting popular fantasies of female victimization for mass consumption, or as a proto-feminist unfortunately capitulating to the patriarchal oppression she simultaneously indicts” (Croskery 70).4 That both of these opposing readings are possible demonstrates the complexity of the relationship between eighteenth-century women and popular markets in terms of both production and consumption. Popular literature is typically a reflection of a given society’s interests, concerns, and even obsessions. That eighteenth-century London was deeply concerned with questions of status, desire, and moral and social regulation is evident in the sheer quantity of early fiction (amatory and otherwise), and in the constant negotiation of norms in its content. In writing for an audience with these concerns, Haywood worked within a relatively horizontal producer-consumer relationship, which can be in part attributed to the gender of her presumed audience: “the idealized subject projected by early eighteenth-century print culture is first and foremost a female … women readers function in the period as a kind of common denominator” (Pollock 9).5 As literacy rates and leisure time slowly increased after the Restoration, writers were on the verge of moving outside of the patronage of a small aristocratic circle, facilitating a producer-consumer shift that Ros Ballaster describes as moving “from a sense of (seductive) authority exerted by the text [to] a sense of the (still seductive) dependency of the text on the act of reading that [was] to realize it, in its complexity and plurality, as writing” (Seductive Forms 25). Haywood and other

4 Croskery argues that recognizing the persecuted maiden plots in Haywood’s novels as merely “cautionary backdrops” to plots driven by “incarnate experience of female desire” is essential to avoiding such mischaracterizations. 5 Though the evidence suggests strongly that a majority of Haywood’s readers would appear to have been female, recent scholarship has argued to expand our understanding of her audience in both gender and rank. See Collins, “Cross-Gendered,” Ballaster, “Gender of Opposition,” and King, “New Contexts.”

6

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

authors of amatory fiction rarely assert absolute historical truth for their narratives, but rather suggest wider cultural truths underlying their individual fictions. That the stories do not always end exactly as moral and ideological convention would have it sets up what I will argue is an important point in the consideration of Haywood and popular culture: she stakes out new gendered and artistic ground by using the popular medium of the early novel (with characters identified as members of the elite) to re-tell widely known cultural fictions to an audience from across social ranks, all of whom already knew how these young women’s stories are supposed to end. In the same year that she published The Masqueraders, Haywood wrote in her preface to another masquerade novel, The Fatal Secret, that “Love is a Topick which I believe few are ignorant of; there requires no Aids of Learning, no general conversation, no application; a shady Grove and purling Stream are all Things that’s necessary to give us an Idea of the tender Passion” (ii). As we have seen, the opening of The Masqueraders asserts that masquerades are events that are similarly universally known. So while early works of English fiction were often devalued as chaotic and “delusive productions of the imagination” (Stewart 50), Haywood strives to universalize and naturalize (right down to streams and groves) the human experience that her fictions convey. Haywood’s fictions are not limited to imitations of contemporary social practices, but serve also as what popular culture theorist John Fiske identifies as “representations”: “not a means of escaping from the world but of acting on it. Representation is the means of making that sense of the world which serves one’s own interests: it is the ‘process of putting into concrete forms (that is, different signifiers) an abstract ideological concept’” (571, quoting O’Sullivan et al.). Haywood’s fiction consistently problematizes and reformulates social institutions and regulatory conventions, and the masquerade provides a useful code in establishing the contradictions in Haywood’s stories, their readings, and their critical implications. Despite its association with a carnivalesque world upside down, and despite the social controversy surrounding it, the masquerade was an accessible, established “cultural institution” (Castle, Masquerade 74). Haywood’s assertion of the masquerade’s universal audience makes clear from the beginning of The Masqueraders that she is not representing unattainable fantasy, but a known site for knowable interactions and relationships. The events of the story may seem illicit and fantastical, but the fiction retains its grounding because the fantastical world of the masquerade is itself a reality. In Fiske’s sense of the abstract, the masquerade was a social

Introduction: Life in Excess

 7 

event that provided women with a gateway to otherwise unknowable freedoms, but concretely, the social structures surrounding it remained unchanged, rendering women vulnerable to serious consequences for participating in an event that was technically sanctioned. Haywood translates that catch-22 into literary narratives that unpack the pitfalls of such cultural fictions of freedom. As it conveys those contradictions, however, The Masqueraders is for the most part without didactic commentary, celebrating the pleasures and freedoms of masquerade and its assignations while cautioning that the rules of reality – whatever they might be, and whatever double standards and inequalities they enforce – are always ultimately in effect. In its clear-eyed representation of her culture’s social fabric, Haywood’s fiction engages readers as spectators, appealing to their powers of observation.6 She does not, as Anthony Pollock puts it, “normalize and extend existing power relations, but rather serves the potentially critical function of making those systems visible” (149) in a way that empowers the reader to manipulate these presiding systems. This facilitation is the resistant power of popular culture even as it functions within the framework determined by more conventionally valued understandings of art and culture: the female characters may indeed end badly, but the unfairness and arbitrariness of the system that enforces those ends is made public, and thus opened to interrogation or subversion. In popular fiction, resistance to the inequities of the existing social order is located within the license of interpretation: the reader is empowered through depiction of the status quo as contradictory and arbitrary. As Michel de Certeau notes, popular reading is typically “a series of advances and retreats, tactics and games played with the text” (175) that conveys both prescribed boundaries and the potential for manipulation of those boundaries. Both Haywood’s fiction and the masquerades it depicts explore the pleasures and perils of femininity, and both function as metaphors for the participation of women in public spheres, sometimes as objects of consumption, but also as agents of consumption and production. Some women create profit and opportunity (from writers to masquerade costumers), and others consume the pleasures of the event or the text and the increased knowledge that equips them to engage the world differently.

6 For an extended discussion of Haywood’s preoccupation with sight and seeing, see Merritt, Beyond Spectacle.

8

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

Eliza Haywood and Her Readers On Eliza Haywood’s biography, one hesitates to write anything confidently: in the last two decades, much of what had long been taken as safe in biographical terms has been proven incorrect. On the basis of the work of Patrick Spedding and Leah Orr, we can document her publication history reasonably assertively (though as Orr points out, less assertively than we thought we could ten years ago).7 Because Haywood was a successful writer whose death was notable, we know that she died on 25 February 1756, and was buried in St Margaret’s churchyard, not physically far (but a huge reputational distance) from Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, where many scholars might place her now for a literary significance that was only partly acknowledged in her own day. As political biographer Kathryn R. King has documented at length, there were at least two different “Haywoods” in circulation in the 1720s. Haywood was certainly “a figure for the scandal of the early novel and for the anxieties aroused by the encroachments of (in Swift’s phrase) stupid and infamous scribbling women.” But at least in her first two major publications, there is bibliographical evidence that Haywood’s work was being marketed to “fashionable audiences, [and belonged] in important ways to the developing discourse of politeness and bourgeois refinement” (“New Contexts” 263). As Al Coppola has documented, both Love in Excess (1719–20) and Letters from a Lady of Quality to a Chevalier (1721) were printed on high-quality paper, with elaborate ornamentation and generous amounts of white space, qualities of “elegant production” that King suggests “announced suitability for a fashionable readership” (“New Contexts” 266). Haywood’s other novels of the 1720s, however, lack those production values, and are printed in dense blocks of text on cheap paper. By late in 1724, she was being criticized as a scandal monger by those who had been part of her literary circle only months before. As King puts it, “though the reasons for the development are uncertain, it is clear that by 1725 there existed two Haywoods, one elegant and the other scandalous” (“New Contexts” 266).8 Two influential accounts in the next half-decade cemented the historical presence of the latter. 7 King has questioned Spedding’s interpretation of the term “publisher” in his Bibliography (“Fame” 84n4), but even with that caveat, through Spedding’s standard bibliography, combined with Orr’s work, we can still be reasonably confident. 8 For an extended discussion of Haywood’s evolving status and reputation, see King, Political Biography 21–34.

Introduction: Life in Excess

 9 

The two most famous accounts of Haywood by her literary contemporaries are parts of larger texts that are themselves meditations on the relationship between elite and popular culture: the vicious attack by Alexander Pope in The Dunciad (1728 and Variorum 1729) and a gentler, but still unflattering depiction of Haywood as “Mrs Novel” in Henry Fielding’s The Author’s Farce (1730). Pope’s muckraking apocalyptic satire is organized to some degree around the association between the feminine and the frivolous, and the capacity of both to contaminate the true art that the poem argues may be forever lost: the enchantress Dulness seduces a young male writer away from the elite and intrinsically valuable form of the epic and tempts him towards the foolish realm of feminized romance.9 Book Two of the poem depicts a series of competitions that exemplify the failings of contemporary literary arts. Haywood, embraced by her illegitimate children, is sexualized and objectified as the prize to be won in a literal pissing contest between two publishers: See in the circle next, Eliza placed, Two babes of love close clinging to her waist; … [she is a] Juno of majestic size, With cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes. 

(2. 149–56)10

In the voice of “Martinus Scriblerus,” the faux-editor of the 1729 Variorum edition, Pope goes farther, using this unattractive image as a key to Haywood’s identity: “In this game is exposed in the most contemptuous manner, the profligate licenciousness of those shameless scribblers (for the most part of that sex, which ought least to be capable of such malice or impudence) who in libellous memoirs and novels, reveal the faults and misfortunes of both sexes, to the ruin or disturbance of publick fame or private happiness” (2:157n). The level of vitriol here seems excessive for a writer whom Pope typifies as insignificant, but the attack conveys an anxiety about what Pope perhaps accidentally identifies as the vulnerability of true art to the pressures

Ballaster documents in Seductive Forms, “the complaint that romance inverts ‘proper’ hierarchies of fact, history, temporality, and place under its enchanting wand of the absolute and transformative power of love, was … a well-established trope of masculinist criticism” of the eighteenth century (165). 10 In the 1728 first edition this description goes on to mention “Pearls on her neck, and roses in her hair, / And her fore-buttocks to the navel bare” (2. 141–2). Both the nudity and the derogatory description of the female body are deleted from the 1729 Variorum edition.   9 As

10

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

of the popular. As Brean Hammond has argued, Haywood functions in The Dunciad as the embodiment of what he calls novelization: “the set of material, cultural and institutional changes responsible for the promotion of prose narrative to its undisputed preeminence as the most widely consumed form of imaginative writing, a process that extinguished the long poem, marginalized all other poetic forms, and rendered the theatre a minority interest” (303). While Pope could not yet see the full range of effects of novelization, still several decades in the future, he makes clear what Haywood meant to her high-culture literary contemporaries: the decline of culture through the abandonment of classical values in favour of lowest-common-denominator markets and profits, driven by uneducated, undiscriminating, and even female consumers.11 The traditional assumptions of Haywood’s readership as nearly exclusively female have been questioned intermittently since the late 1980s, most fully by Christine Blouch’s witty analysis of earlier discussions of “What Ann Lang Read”12 and King’s work on Haywood and the Hillarian circle, followed by Warner’s “Novels on the Market.” In the late nineteenth century, Edmund Gosse famously argued that Eliza was read by servants in the kitchen, by seamstresses, by basket women, by ’prentices of all sorts, male and female, but mostly the latter. For girls of this sort there was no other reading of a light kind in 1724. It was Eliza Haywood or nothing. The men of the same class read Defoe; but he, with his cynical severity, his absence of all pity for a melting mood, his savagery towards women, was not likely to be preferred by “straggling nymphs.” (162–3)

Gosse’s assumptions are legion, and Robert Adam Day repeats some of them, but also provides useful data in his 1966 assertion that information on book prices and on average servants’ wages suggests that, in fact, such people as servants would most naturally come by novels like Mrs. Haywood’s when they were discarded by the gentry, rather than purchase, for her books were too expensive to be bought outright by those who worked for a

11 In her introduction to Miss Betsy Thoughtless, Blouch notes that “the cultural war being waged in the early eighteenth century was over both print culture and gender. To Pope and Swift, it might be said, the new popular print culture – a sort of monstrous female – threatened a purer, masculinized, and elite literary monopoly” (8). See also Ballaster, “Gender of Opposition” and Hollis, “Gender of Print.” 12 See also Turner, Living by the Pen and Shevelow, Women and Print Culture.

Introduction: Life in Excess

 11 

living. On the other hand, many women of the upper classes figure in Mrs. Haywood’s dedications, and Lady Betty Germain owned a copy of her Love Letters on all Occasions … Doubtless Mrs. Haywood’s wares were known to the more frothy minds of the polite world and to the daughters of middleclass trading families. (73)

Leaving aside the evidence that Haywood’s early novels were read by many women and men who were not at all frothy-minded,13 Day’s economic sense substantiated for a new century Pope’s fear that popular fiction was one of the areas in which at least parts of his own elite audience were participating in popular culture.14 Though marginalized himself to some degree by virtue of his Roman Catholicism, Pope conveys the sort of elite anti-popular-­culture perspective that Ben Agger associates with “high-tone cultural doyens who believe that culture is a vehicle for rehabilitating the taste of the masses by imparting important moral and civic lessons” (24). Fielding’s depiction of Haywood is somewhat less expected. Though he would work apparently collegially with her at the Haymarket Theatre, he creates Haywood as Mrs Novel, the embodiment of empty prose prattling in The Author’s Farce (1730). She is determined by her frivolous art, her deluded sexual pursuit of the castrato Seignior Opera, and her deceitful immorality. In her first song, she explains that she has arrived in the afterlife having died a maiden who “rather would have laid in / Than thus have died for love … Would I had kept my breath-a / And lost my maidenhead” (Act III air v). In her second, she sings, “May all maids from me take warning … Lest the first kind offer scorning, / They, without a second die,” still claiming the position of virgin while advising others to abandon the state with all haste. The song ends with Mrs Novel asking the goddess Nonsense to leave Opera to her: “If you thwart my inclination, / Let me die for love again” (III air ix). She then explains that Opera should have been her husband: “He swore he would be so. Yes, he knows I died for love, 13 Including, the evidence of their own novels suggests, Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson, as well as Aaron Hill, Richard Savage, John Dyer, Martha Fowke, and others in the Hillarian circle. 14 For a further investigation of the implication of this constructed sense of the exclusively female reader of novels, see Warner’s “Novels,” which considers the assumption of a gendered reader as a device of anti-novel discourse. Warner documents that the antinovel promotion of “the fear that the novel reader will become absorbed in unconscious mimicry” and the “currency” of novel reading “as a debased market culture and its potential for elevation [that] arise from the same idea: that a reader/consumer can be made to conform to the object” (98).

12

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

for I died in childbed.” In a self-sacrificing gesture worthy of the model of female friendship in The Surprize, Nonsense abandons Seignior Opera at this news, and the reunited lovers sing a duet. Before the end of the play, however, Mrs Novel has used her wiles to persuade the non-­conformist preacher Murdertext to allow a dance by inviting him to “Leave your canting, / Zealous ranting, / Come and shake a merry haunch” (III air xxiii). He cries, “the flesh hath subdued the spirit. I feel a motion in me, and whether it be of grace or no I am not certain.” While without the cruel quality of Pope’s representation, for forty-one nights in 1730, Fielding’s wildly popular play15 put onto the public stage the caricature that would be attached to Haywood for 250 years: a woman using sex for profit and pleasure while misrepresenting her own virtue and identity, no better than the women in her most salacious fictions. In commencing to investigate these sorts of eighteenth-century representations, our most current sense of Haywood’s biography originates with Christina Blouch’s groundbreaking research, beginning in 1991, when she definitively disproved several previously accepted truths about Haywood’s life. Most notably, she debunked George Whicher’s erroneous (but oft repeated) account of a marriage to Reverend Valentine Haywood, a marriage that Whicher claimed had ended in a scandalous “runaway wife” advertisement in a London periodical. Kathryn R. King’s 2012 Political Biography of Eliza Haywood alternately rejects and expands Blouch’s biographical hypotheses and evidence. King argues persuasively, for example, against Blouch’s tentative identification of writer Richard Savage as the father of at least the first of the two possibly illegitimate children that Pope and others attach to Haywood. Such dismantlings of the accounts of Haywood’s life as one so salacious that might be the subject of one of her own scandal fictions is satisfying scholarship, but emphasize again how little we do know. As the account of her earliest biographer makes clear, though, this lack of information is due at least in part to Haywood’s own wishes. David Erskine Baker recorded in 1764 that “from a supposition of some improper liberties being taken with her character after death, by the intermixture of truth and falsehood with her history, she laid a solemn injunction … not to communicate to any one the least circumstance relating to her” (1.216). Her injunction seems to have been followed, but the best

15 The success of The Author’s Farce was second only to Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. The play’s first and second editions were published under the imprint of J. Roberts, the trade publisher also named on the title pages of both The Masqueraders and The Surprize.

Introduction: Life in Excess

 13 

available evidence allows us a glimpse into the life of a woman who was well known in the theatre, who travelled in literary and intellectual circles to which most women could not have access, and who was sharply conscious, as both artist and publisher, of the markets and demands of popular culture and its audiences, especially women. To use the best couched language of uncertain biography, Haywood was almost certainly born in 1693 to a family named Fowler, who were probably involved “in the Mercantile Way” (Baker 1.216), though whether that means storefront shopkeepers or international merchant traders is unclear. Later in her life, she asserted in one surviving letter that she was “nearly related to Sr Richard [Fowler] of the [Harnage] Grange” though there is no definitive evidence of the exact nature of that relationship.16 She seems to have married before the autumn of 1714, but we know this only because in the earliest surviving evidence of her acting career, she is credited as Mrs Haywood at the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. Other than that he was not Valentine Haywood, we do not know anything about Haywood’s husband. From a 1729 letter, it appears that she had two children “the eldest of whom [was then] not more than 7 years of age.”17 Other than Pope’s reference to her as the mother of two bastards, there is no further reference to Haywood’s children, leading King to note the possibility that they died in childhood (Political xii). The paternity of these children is also unclear: both Blouch and Spedding identify William Hatchett as the likely father of Haywood’s second child, and Spedding goes further, arguing that Hatchett and Haywood “lived together for most of their lives as a de facto couple” (Bibliography 26). King, however, refutes this typification of the relationship, calling Hatchett’s paternity “wholly improbable” (Political 6), and noting that there is no evidence of Haywood and Hatchett being acquainted before 1728 or 1729. The lack of confirmed private information aside, Haywood was a public woman for her day, with all of the benefits and punishments that might be expected to come with that role. From the beginning, she worked simultaneously in multiple popular media, performing in the theatre from 1714,18

16 See Blouch, “Romance” 536–40, for theories and evidence for Haywood’s parentage. 17 Spedding provides evidence that this letter was sent shortly after March 1729, and argues that “the eldest child must have been born between March 1722 and March 1723, and was probably born between April and December 1722” (Bibliography 54). 18 Her somewhat intermittent acting work in London included roles in Fielding’s plays at the Haymarket theatre until 1737, when she acted on her own benefit night, on the last evening before Walpole’s Licensing Act went into effect, all but outlawing new plays that did not meet government approval.

14

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

and publishing fiction, starting with her novel Love in Excess in 1719. Though the specific number of editions and copies is contested, this novel was among the most successful pieces of prose fiction published before Richardson’s Pamela in 1739.19 Haywood went on to publish between twenty-five and forty works of fiction before 1729 in what is sometimes considered the first phase of her fiction career, with another ten to fifteen longer novels between 1741 and her death.20 Between 1721 and 1737 she was also publishing plays: the tragedy The Fair Captive (1721), the comedy A Wife to be Lett (1723), the less-successful drama Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lunenburgh (1729), and the successful Opera of Operas (1733, though the common attribution of authorship is disputed by Orr), based upon Henry Fielding’s 1731 burlesque, The Tragedy of Tragedies. Haywood’s romantic fictions of the early 1720s were popular and generally sold well, but they were not understood to be serious work, certainly not seen as important works of literary art.21 There was, though, a period in Haywood’s early career where her work was associated with and targeted to more fashionable, more elite audiences: between 1719 and 1722, the period in which she was most fully associated with the “Hillarians,” Aaron Hill’s fashionable social circle, which was invested in political, social, and philosophical issues and debates. As King’s important accounts of Haywood and the Hillarians make clear, this association is essential in considering the complexities of Haywood’s reputation and public identity during the period leading up to that in which The Masqueraders and The Surprize were published. Haywood and Hill met in 1718 or 1719, and she was a regular participant in Hill’s polite assemblies; she appears to have benefited from the fact that “the Hill circle was one of very few coteries in London at this time known to have encouraged female talent” (“New Contexts” 264). The time in which she was most closely associated with the Hillarians coincides with the period in which her early publications were released with the high production values that invited a fashionable audience. By 1723, however, fractures appeared amid the circle, evidenced

19 For a concise overview of the controversy on sales of Love in Excess, see Luhning 165n3. For full bibliographical documentation, see Spedding. 20 These numbers cover a wide range to accommodate the varying arguments for attribution offered by Spedding and Orr. 21 Though I am not entirely persuaded, in her Political Biography King offers an intriguing suggestion that Love in Excess is an exception here, arguing for the novel as an experiment in the Longinal sublime that participated in an exchange of aesthetic ideas among the Hillarians.

Introduction: Life in Excess

 15 

by Haywood’s 1723 novel, The Injur’d Husband, which appears to proffer a nasty swipe at fellow Hillarians Richard Savage and Martha Fowkes.22 Though Haywood may have tried to mend fences with her pro-Savage novel The Rash Resolve in 1724, she appears to have alienated much of the Hillarian circle with a vicious attack on Martha Fowkes in Memoirs of a Certain Island adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia, in September 1724.23 As King points out, the public criticisms of Haywood did not begin to appear until 1725, after Haywood’s break from the Hillarians, and after Utopia appeared, containing attacks on Martha Fowkes and Martha Blount, two women beloved by Savage and Pope respectively.24 By the autumn of 1724, even Hill himself was publicly critical of Haywood. Whether by coincidence or cause, by the time The Masqueraders was published her work no longer received lavish productions, and her public persona had become more widely associated with scandal. Still, she continued writing prolifically until 1729, the year in which her fiction production ground nearly to a halt. Spedding, Blouch, and King all reject the old saw that Haywood was put out of work by the publication of Pope’s Dunciad 1728, though each offers a different reading of the evidence. Spedding attributes the pause to the birth of Haywood’s second child (55). King suggests that Haywood began redirecting her energies towards the theatre in the exciting artistic and political environment that followed the success of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera in 1728. And Blouch argues that Haywood was “not only not silenced by Pope, but capitalized on her post-Dunciad notoriety during the early years of the decade” (“Romance” 541): Blouch documents the production history of Haywood’s The Dramatic Historiographer (1735, retitled and then expanded as A Companion to the Theatre, 1736), making the case that Haywood continued as an active writer who had shifted her attention away from fiction and toward theatre history and criticism. Regardless of the reason for her hiatus from fiction, Haywood 22 On the complex relationships inside the Hill circle, see King, Political Biography 17–34. On the evidence for the novel as personal attack, see Gerrard, 91–2. 23 King offers evidence that at least parts of the manuscript had been seen by members of the Hillarian circle as early as October 1723, causing friction as much as a year before publication (Political 29). 24 Though the standard reading of Utopia and its keys offered by Pat Rogers and others is that “Bl – -t” refers to Martha Blount (Rogers 153), King reads the text as a comment on the South Sea Bubble, and suggests instead Sir John Blunt, who profited from the investment bubble (Political 40–2). This reading of Utopia renders Pope’s Dunciad an artistic attack more than a personal one.

16

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

would return to the form with her customary energy in 1741 with her Anti-Pamela, a response to Samuel Richardson’s famous appropriation of the female voice in Pamela. The 1743 Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman then marks the beginning of the period of her life in which many readers felt that she had reformed and “redeemed” herself from her earlier salacious works. As Clara Reeve famously pronounced in her 1785 overview of the Romance genre, Haywood “repented of her faults, and employed the later part of her life in expiating the offences of the former” (120). In Haywood’s own time too, her later novels, especially The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, were embraced by respectable audiences.25 Written at the height of her first-period market popularity in 1724, Haywood’s The Masqueraders is not one of those morally restorative novels, but interestingly, The Surprize, written the same year, is. The significance of the publication of The Surprize between the two parts of The Masqueraders (and in the same year as the salacious The Fatal Secret) has not been previously recognized, and Reeve’s sense of Haywood’s career as bifurcated and oppositional has long been accepted as a general outline.26 I have argued elsewhere, using The Masqueraders and The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, that the presence of elements of libertinism are remarkably consistent across Haywood’s career, and Backscheider makes a parallel case on the consistency of Haywood’s stated morals and psychological realism.27 Reading The Surprize similarly undermines binary understandings of a two-phase career of separate moral spheres: like the 25 A portion of this later respectability also comes from Haywood’s work as an essayist and publisher. Haywood created three different periodicals over her lifetime: The Female Spectator (1744), The Parrot (1746), and The Young Lady (1756), which she was forced to abandon in her final illness. Haywood’s periodical essays offer insights into issues traditionally thought feminine (fashion, morals, courtship, domestic life), but also publishing, politics, literature, and science, and form an important dialogue with her own literary representations of her cultural moment. On Haywood’s essays, see Wright and Newman, Fair Philosopher. 26 Variants of this reading include positions that take the early and late fiction as oppositional, but interpret the distinction not as a moral reform, but as a market strategy: “It might better be said that Haywood’s late-career publication practices indicate the extent to which she had learned – as Betsy Thoughtless does – that the most essential virtue is appearing to be virtuous … though the novels indicated an unchanged preoccupation with questions of sexual and social identity” (Blouch, “Introduction” 12). 27 Potter, “A God-like Sublimity of Passion,” and Backscheider, “The Story of Haywood’s Novels.” Spedding has made a parallel argument in his attribution of The Sopha (1742) as a translation by Haywood and Hatchett of “one of the period’s most famous erotic works” (20). See “Writing (and) Pornography” for the full case.

Introduction: Life in Excess

 17 

old Jack/John Donne canard, that convenient narrative depends upon ignoring several otherwise promising intersections that make the case more nuanced and more interesting. The most important argument that I wish to make about Haywood, though, is not the recognition of consistency over opposition in her fiction. Rather, it is that the most important consistency is not morality or immorality, but Haywood’s career-long representation and interrogation of the relationship between the devalued place of women and their art and notions of what we have come to term popular culture. Haywood’s work is nearly universally concerned with depictions of the pleasures and dangers of the popular in a way that illuminates the conventional understanding of elite artistic culture as intrinsically masculine. In particular The Masqueraders’ depictions of women’s education, friendship, courtship, and marriage, combined with the ideas of identity and performance inherent in masquerade culture, invite consideration of the conventional associations of the frivolous and the feminine and their relationship to the history of the novel, in which Haywood plays such a major role. Popular Culture and the Eighteenth Century As I have argued at length elsewhere, in the eighteenth century, the feminine is imagined as popular and thus is widely excluded from the intellectual and ideological valuation of elite culture: the historical masculinization of high culture creates the feminine as the popular.28 There is debate about how to define popular culture before the twentieth century, and how to make such a potentially slippery construction critically useful; several points of these debates help to illuminate the values and conflicts that Haywood’s representation of popular culture conveys.29 Both Barry Reay and Peter Burke begin their important discussions of the history of popular culture with initially sweeping terms, using forms of the negative definition of “the culture of the non-elite … including women, children, shepherds, sailors, beggars and the rest” (Burke xiii), but as Burke also makes clear, despite widely articulated narratives of difference, elite culture and popular culture had substantial overlap until late in the eighteenth century: while those of lower status were excluded from activities associated

28 See Potter, “Historicizing the Popular and the Feminine” 5–14. 29 For a concise, highly readable conversation on these challenges, see Briggs et al., “What is the History of Popular Culture?”

18

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

with the culture of privilege, members of the elite could and did participate in popular culture. “Popular culture was everybody’s culture” (68).30 A consideration of Haywood informed by women’s place in popular culture in the eighteenth century must similarly recognize fluidity in definitions of both women’s culture and popular culture.31 That which constitutes the historical popular also exists in some degree of flux: given shifts in cultural systems of valuation over time, popular can evolve into elite, and elite can be appropriated into popular, often long after the text, product, or performance has been created.32 The significance of studying popular culture, then, is not just about reading work created by and for the masses, but rather considering the processes by which popular social and creative practices are incorporated into elite art, or media arguably controlled by the elite. Such incorporation is evident, for example, in some histories of the novel, where popular forms like amatory fiction and scandal fiction have been read as precursors or forerunners to the real novel, whose “rise” was observed later in the century.33 Modern theorizations of popular culture find some of their roots in the eighteenth century. With reference to eighteenth- and twenty-first century cultures respectively, both Paula Backscheider and Joanne Hollows note the power relations inherent in popular culture, and decline to identify any particular cultural product as elite or popular, high or low, based exclusively or even primarily on the social or economic standing of those who create it. Backscheider describes eighteenth-century popular culture as “easily available, affordable, familiar to a large number of people representing several social classes, and … to some extent self-consciously

30 For a helpful survey of different forms of popular entertainment in print and performance in the period, see Bertelsen, “Popular Entertainment and Instruction.” 31 As Stuart Hall argued, understandings of popular culture conventionally include approaches that might be typified into three categories: descriptive methodologies (what Hall critiques as “all the things that ‘the people’ do and have done” (513)); mass culture (popular culture as an often corporate product pressed upon the populace from outside, an inauthentic form of imposed culture); and folk culture (some form of ostensibly more authentic culture, outside of conventional ideas of hierarchy, produced and consumed almost exclusively by non-elites). 32 Stuart Hall has referred to this phenomenon as the “cultural escalator” (514). 33 Watt took this as a given in his foundational The Rise of the Novel, but generations of scholarship since then have often followed his lead to varying degrees, from simple agreement to apologetic acknowledgments of a role played by these sorts of writing, and parallel narratives of the women’s novel as a separate phenomenon. See McKeon, “Watt” for an overview and revisiting of this tradition.

Introduction: Life in Excess

 19 

‘manufactured,’ calculated to succeed because composed with high awareness of audience-pleasing elements” (“Paradigms” 21). Just as important as these notions of availability and self-consciousness in the popular is what Hollows identifies as its cultural function: popular culture in modern contexts is not a static construct, but rather a site “where conflicts between dominant and subordinate groups are played out, and distinctions between the cultures of these groups are continually constructed and reconstructed” (27). This understanding of popular culture can then be further illuminated by the recognition that, prior to the twentieth century, the feminine is widely associated with the popular. Elite culture in the eighteenth century defaults to the male, from the explicitly masculine identity of the artist, to the masculinized genre of the early novel (as opposed to the location of the products of female writers in the gendered generic desert of amatory fiction).34 Fielding and other mid-century fathers of the novel used every rhetorical strategy available to articulate the differences between their valuable work in the newly constructed genre of the novel and the assumed artistic emptiness of women’s fiction. Despite the success of the long prose fiction published by women over the preceding sixty years, for example, Fielding claims in Joseph Andrews in 1742 that his is a “kind of Writing, which I do not remember to have seen hitherto attempted in our language” (3). He acknowledges women writers only as “those Persons of surprising Genius, the Authors of immense Romances, or the modern Novel and Atalantis writers; who, without any Assistance from Nature or History, record Persons who never were, or will be, and Facts which never did nor possibly can happen: Whose Heroes are of their own Creation, and their Brains the Chaos whence all their Materials are collected” (187). In Fielding’s version of the conventional eighteenth-century understanding of the connections between the feminine and the popular in fiction, women’s writing is the product of chaotic imaginative fancy, removed from the masculinized realms of nature and history. Women writers, their work, and their audiences are in this construction all frivolous, all products of fashion. Fielding pushes his claim further in Tom Jones, with a chapter titled “Of those who lawfully may, and of those

34 See Ballaster on amatory fiction. On the practices of novel reading and the shifting status of the novel as literature in the early eighteenth century, see Warner, Licensing Entertainment; Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture; and Dennis Hall, “Signs of Life.” On interpreting such elements of the popular, see O’Driscoll, “Reading through Desire.”

20

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

who may not, write histories such as this,” which distinguishes “what is true and genuine, in this historic kind of writing, from what is false and counterfeit” in expectation that following the demonstration of his own genius “a swarm of foolish novels and monstrous romances will be produced, either to the great impoverishing of booksellers, or to the great loss of time and depravation of morals in the reader.” The chapter differentiates literary forms that “require some little degree of learning and knowledge” from “the composition of novels and romances, [in which] nothing is necessary but paper, pens, and ink, with the manual capacity of using them.” Fielding’s narrator asserts that in order to be qualified to write fiction, one needs specific qualities and skills, several of which are either practically limited to men in the eighteenth century, or expressed in firmly masculinized language. Authors need genius, “those powers of the mind capable of penetrating into all things within our reach and knowledge, and of distinguishing their essential differences”; they need invention, which is not a “creative faculty” like mere fancy, but “a quick and sagacious penetration into the true essence of all the objects of our contemplation.” Finally, a writer requires worldly experience: “a good share of learning … a competent knowledge of history and belleslettres … [and] conversation … with all ranks and degrees of men” (487–92). Fielding’s narrator articulates exactingly the presumptively masculine nature of great literature and art in the eighteenth century. The implication of this sort of eighteenth-century literary example can be illuminated by twentieth-century scholarship on the devaluatory practices of gendering popular culture. As Fiske has pointed out, “as with many experiences of the subordinate, fantasy or escapism is often ‘feminized,’ that is, it is seen as a sign of feminine weakness resulting from women’s inability to come to terms with (masculine) reality. It is a sort of daydreaming that allows women or children to achieve their desires in a way that they are never capable of in the ‘real’ world, a compensatory domain which results from and disguises their ‘real’ lack of power” (571). Andreas Huyssen theorizes this conventional association of the popular, the feminine, and the powerless in his discussion of early twentieth-­century modernism as he argues for the political and ideological implications of the standardization of “connotations of mass culture as essentially feminine” (192) in contrast with what he terms a “male mystique in modernism” (194). He documents the casting of hierarchical cultural divisions in gendered terms, a process by which mass culture is “somehow associated with woman while real, authentic culture remains the prerogative of men” (191). And while Huyssen’s 1986 piece hopefully suggests post-modernism as a possible panacea

Introduction: Life in Excess

 21 

for “the persistent gendering as feminine of that which is devalued” (196), R.L. Rutsky examines the continuity of that devaluation at the end of the twentieth century: “while contemporary theory may not explicitly characterize popular culture as feminine, it still tends to denigrate it in terms traditionally associated with women: the rhetoric of trivial, superficial (and therefore deceptive) pleasures, of conformity and commodification, of a dangerous fluidity that threatens to co-opt, absorb, adulterate or infect” more rigorous intellectual and social domains (8). Where high culture defaults to male – as it does throughout the eighteenth century, affirmed by Pope’s identification in The Dunciad of Dullness as specifically ­feminine – what is considered “women’s culture” and what is considered popular culture are used circularly. Each affirms the lesser value and cultural contribution of the other: when women read amatory fiction or consume fashionable commodities, they demonstrate their shallowness of mind; the fact that these commodities are consumed primarily by women affirms their lack of importance as cultural and artistic products. The Masquerade Debates In the face of this devaluation of women’s writing, Haywood’s publication of The Masqueraders in 1724 is significant, as the novel is an explicit contribution to a substantial body of public debate in that year around the practice of masquerading, published in both more and less respected media. In addition to Haywood’s two-part Masqueraders and at least two other of her 1724 novels set around masquerades, London in that year saw Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, publish his Sermon Preached to the Societies for the Reformation of Manners (much of which was reprinted in the anonymous 1724 essay, An Essay on Plays and Masquerades), followed by several responses, including Heydegger’s Letter to the Bishop of London. In this debate, it is the fluidity of identities that makes the masquerade a dangerous place in moralist terms, a site where elite and popular dissolved together practically (in the mixing of ranks), and symbolically (as ages-old popular folk traditions intersected with new fashion to create an event driven by imagined opportunities for pleasure outside of the known and accepted). The public masquerade was an event almost unique to eighteenthcentury England, collapsing, as it did, three sets of cultural practices: the pre-Lenten carnival revelries of cities like Venice, experienced by affluent young men during their grand tours; English costumed performance traditions like the courtly masque; and folk traditions of mumming and local

22

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

saturnalian festivals.35 The public masquerade appears to have emerged in this newly hybrid form after 1710, and, as Terry Castle has documented, had more or less run its course by the end of the eighteenth century. Joseph Addison comments on the “promiscuous Multitude” attending the “midnight Masque” in The Spectator as early as 1711, and Susannah Centlivre published the first known poem on masquerading in 1713. In 1718 periodicals like the Weekly Journal were describing the events in slightly breathless terms (reprinted here in Appendix B), and in 1717 plays like Charles Johnson’s The Masquerade had reinscribed the practice in the public eye through a different performance medium. The most influential of the early eighteenth-century masquerades were the public masquerades hosted by James Heidegger at the Opera House and the Haymarket Theatre, and it is Heidegger’s events that provide the setting for the plot of Haywood’s novel.36 As the Weekly Journal account summarizes in detail, masquerades began between 8:00 and 9:00 in the evening and continued until 5:00 or 7:00 the next morning. Men and women could arrive in groups, couples, or individually, already in costume. Favourite costumes included the pastoral (nymphs, shepherds, and occasionally sheep and other animals), the religious (nuns and friars whose devout appearance contrasted with the implicitly licentious body beneath the costume), the cultural (exotic Turks, Venetians, Spaniards, and Gypsies, but also stereotyped Scotsmen and others), and boundary-crossers (cross-gender costumes, adults dressed as infants, aristocrats as beggars, and footmen as princes), as well as the visor and domino, a costume for those seeking to erase identity rather than to assume a new one.37 Guests also widely used what was called “masquerade voice”: a falsetto squeak that could disguise both identity and gender. Masquerade assembly rooms were typically ornately decorated and lit with relatively costly wax candles; food and wine were available in abundance throughout the event, often with a dinner served late in the evening or at midnight. Masqueradegoers ate and danced, but also gambled, often winning and losing large sums over the course of an evening.

35 See Castle, Masquerade 19–22. 36 For a spectacular image of a Heidegger masquerade, see Giuseppe Grisoni’s 1724 painting Masquerade on the Stage of the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket (figure 4). 37 See Hogarth (figure 2) and Grisoni (figure 4) for visual surveys of masquerade costumes, Morland (figure 7) for a nun, and the anonymous image of Miss Chudley for the visor and domino and for Miss Chudleigh’s own famous state of un-dress (figure 6).

Introduction: Life in Excess

 23 

With deeper investigation, what Castle calls “masquerade sociology” (Masquerade 28) gets even more complex than these descriptive facts might initially suggest. While masquerades were marketed as exclusive events targeting a fashionable audience – and the beau monde did indeed attend – ticket prices ranged from three to five shillings in the 1720s (though they went as high as four guineas for genuinely exclusive events by the 1740s). Castle typifies the price as “quite low” (28), and the rate is parallel to that of a theatre ticket.38 Citing Addison and others, Castle notes another “crucial piece of masquerade sociology: the fact that women, of no matter what position, were free to attend the masquerade unescorted. Of virtually no other eighteenth-century public gathering, with the exception perhaps of churchgoing, can this be said” (“Eros” 164). The ground for this sort of independent movement while masked had been laid over several decades earlier in the period: since the Restoration, it had been intermittently fashionable for women to hide their identities with masks while in public in order to protect themselves from harassment and their reputations from speculation. The fashion was also used by some women to excite curiosity and to enable behaviours to which they could never admit.39 At masquerades, mixed classes and unsupervised women pressed the ostensibly modest tradition of masking to its logical end as partygoers behaved in ways well outside of the collective social norms of the early eighteenth century. As The Weekly Journal of 19 April 1718 asserts, “The mask secures the Ladies from Detection, and encourages Liberty, the Guilt of which their Blushes would betray when barefac’d till by Degrees they are innur’d to that which is out of their Vertue to restrain.” In 1724, the masquerade was not only a popular event, but also a popular topic of debate, raising as it did issues of morality, identity, gender, and sexuality. It was also a significant economic venture not only in the event itself, but for related entrepreneurs. The economic offshoots of

38 Though costs for theatre tickets varied, during the 1730 season, ticket prices for Fielding’s The Author’s Farce were announced in The Daily Post: 5s for boxes, 3s for the pit, and 2s for the gallery (Woods xvii). Seats in the unfashionable “footmen’s gallery,” farthest from the stage, could be as little as 1s. 39 For a detailed discussion of fashionable masking, see Heyl. For an example of masking in public discourse, see William Wycherley’s 1675 play, The Country Wife, in which the adulterous Lady Fidget uses her mask to protect her “dear reputation” and the jealous Pinchwife rejects the idea of disguising his wife in a mask: “A Mask! No – a Woman masked, like a covered Dish, gives a man curiosity and appetite, when, it may be, uncovered, ’twould turn his stomach” (III.i).

24

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

masquerades are made clear in the most mundane terms in the regular appearances of advertisements for costume providers: in most issues of the Daily Courant through the winter of 1724–5, four different costumers advertised their wares, grouped together in a small section of the classified ads.40 Regardless of the profits to be made from advertisers, however, periodicals also commented on the masquerade’s destabilization of rank and social order, warning of associated moral and physical dangers. The Weekly Journal of 25 January 1724, for example, frets about the fact that “The Peer and the Apprentice, the Punk and the Duchess are, for so long a time upon an equal Foot.” And the following 18 April the same paper cautions, “Fishes are caught with Hooks, Birds are ensnar’d with Nets, but Virgins with Masquerades.” Along with coverage from such periodical publications, several pamphlets and poems appeared or were popular enough to be reprinted in 1724, reflecting in song, poem, and dialogue the social interest in masquerade. Sung to the folk tune, “O! London is a Fine Town,” the song, “Love’s Invention: or, the Recreation in Vogue: An Excellent New Ballad upon the Masquerades” (originally published by Edmund Curll, a man always aware of the next profitable printing venture) was reprinted in a 1724 Oxford Miscellany. The song asserts that masquerades are highly sexualized and yet fashionable events, where the price of admission offers the chance to seduce or be seduced, as one wishes: O! a Masquerade’s a fine Place, For Men of Taste and Pleasure; Since here they may divert themselves, And purchase unknown Treasure For a Guinea and a Crown, Sir, You’ll – win an Haughty Dame; Who if she had her Mask off, Wou’d answer with Disdain 

(73–80)

In an early example of marketing synergy, two other 1724 masquerade texts appeared under the imprint of John Roberts, the same trade publisher 40 In the London Daily Post of 4 February 1724, one ad reads, “The Widow White’s Masquerade Habits. Of all Sorts, rich and new, to be let or sold, at her House in Little Wild-street, and at the Opera Coffee House, or the Black and White Peruke near the Opera House in the Hay Market: With variety of Italian and Silk Masks. Attendance will be given, with Dresses, at the Hay Market, three days before the Masquerades.”

Introduction: Life in Excess

 25 

credited on the title pages of Haywood’s novels of that year. The anonymous poem The Masquerade again details a sexualized environment and describes different types of seductions defined by their costumes. It is particularly interesting for verses 20 and 21, which outline the accidental liaison of “A loving Pair, that long were wed, / But seldom lay in the same Bed,” a crisis nearly identical to that of Dorimenus and Lysemina in The Masqueraders, a married couple who have sex in disguise after a masquerade, both believing themselves to be committing adultery. The second example under the Roberts imprint is less about the event than its reputation and interpretation: The Ball. Stated in a Dialogue betwixt a Prude and a Coquet, Last Masquerade Night (reprinted in Appendix B) offers a specifically feminine interpretation of the pleasures and risks of masquerading, as the coquette Hilaria argues for the pleasures of enacting power over men, as long as she is confident in the capacity of her virtue to protect her: Since conqu’ring Virtue does my Conduct guard; Of harmless Mirth, why shou’d I be debarr’d? Vice I defy! –nor will I stand aloof, But shew myself against Temptation proof … Lost in a Maze, they’ll cry; – we own indeed, Woman’s a Language Man can never read. 

(51–4, 73–4)

In a response that forms a part of a series of double entendres that make up much of the Prude Lucretia’s argument, she queries, To Man, what Language so mysterious yet? But back – or – forwards he cou’d penetrate.

(83–4)

Lucretia argues for the danger of champagne, seduction, and force in a way that shows expansive knowledge of masquerade culture, and when she defends that knowledge with the amatory fiction convention of studying books to protect herself against real-world dangers, Hilaria sagely notes that Lucretia must be “very deeply read.” Like The Masqueraders, The Ball is a self-conscious engagement of popular understandings of the masquerade and its meanings, and of the arguments for both female liberty and its costs. In another reflection of Haywood’s novels, at the end of the poem, Lucretia discovers that Hilaria plans to meet Philander,

26

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

the very man who has abandoned Lucretia after the last masquerade. She calls for her domino so that she can either separate the two or kill Hilaria for her (apparently unknowing) treachery. Parallel to the case of Dalinda and Philecta in The Masqueraders, this dialogue depicts female friendship as secondary to male desire and threatened by events like the masquerade that make betrayal even easier to accomplish by accident or intent.41 Less entertaining but more impassioned are the sermons and essays against masquerading. At the centre of the 1724 debate is the Sermon Preached to the Societies for the Reformation of Manners by Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London (see Appendix B). The bishop argues in particular for the danger of masquerades, masks, and the anonymity they provide: they deprive Virtue and Religion of their last Refuge, I mean Shame, which keeps Multitudes of Sinners within the Bounds of Decency, after they have broken thro’ all the Ties of Principle and Conscience … this pernicious Invention intrenches Vice and Profaneness against all the Assaults and Impressions of Shame; and whatever Lewdness may be concerted, whatever Luxury, Immodesty, or Extravagance may be committed in Word or Deed, no one’s Reputation is at stake, no one’s Character is responsible for it: A Circumstance of such terrible Consequence to Virtue and Good Manners. (np)

This anonymity of course has always been the function of masks, but the bishop objects to the popularization and institutionalization of the device in the ritual of the masquerade. He argues that despite anonymity in the moment, those who attend masquerades “are sure to be mark’d and branded by all good men as Persons of corrupt Minds, and vicious Inclinations, who have abandon’d Religion, and all Pretensions to it, and given themselves over to Luxury and Profaneness.” The sermon’s final argument is that masquerade is a practice imported “by foreigners” who seek to “enslave” us: “And indeed there is not a more effectual way to enslave a People, than first to dispirit and enfeeble them by Licentiousness and Effeminacy.” This doubled association of the dangers of the popular and the effeminate to the health of the nation is one that Haywood appears to have known well: she uses it to her own advantage in the development and marketing of her early novels, and turns it on its ear in writing more than one novel about the masquerade as a site where male seductive power can 41 There are, of course, exceptions to the model of competitive femininity in Haywood’s early fiction, most notably the female friendships that form the core of both The Surprize and The British Recluse.

Introduction: Life in Excess

 27 

affirm existing gender hierarchies even as the event masks itself as a site of freedom for all. The bishop’s sermon evoked several responses, some supportive and others satirical. One of the former is An Essay on Plays and ­Masquerades, published anonymously at “Eman. Matthews at the Bible in Pater-­Noster Row.” The Essay reprints a long block of the sermon at the end of a 30-page essay focused primarily on the immorality of the contemporary theatre. Though the author also quotes Jeremy Collier42 at length, he seeks a position of balance by noting that theatre has the potential for reason and virtue if it is performed correctly. Masquerades, however, cannot be seen so moderately: “whatever favourable Construction may be put upon the Performances of the Stage, yet the late Practice of Masquerading ought, in an especial Manner, to be protested against by every honest Man” (20–1).43 The author agrees that attendance at a masquerade should ruin the reputations of both men and women: masquerading will “very much debase them in the Opinion of Mankind. It will not only spoil Their Taste, and incapacitate them for Business, but it will give other Men very mean Notions of them. The accompanying with Men every way so much their Inferiors, can never be a Way to secure the Respect that is due to an elevated Station, or a publick Character” (19). Worse, it seems, are the intellectual and cultural effects: “The mind is over-run with the Amusement of these Diversions, and is commonly good for nothing some time after. If they become frequent, the Minds of Men will be good for nothing to Eternity … they will court Temptation, they will invite and welcome the Tempter still, tho’ all Hell follow at his Heels. The Churches may e’en be shut up if the Masquerades be kept open” (28, 25). Those against masquerading were outraged at what they argued were the serious social consequences of the immoral elements of the practice.44

42 Collier’s A Short View of the Immorality of the English Stage (1699) was influential among Puritans and other moral conservatives as criticism of the social damage that Collier believed was done by the Restoration stage. He cites masking of women as one of the particular dangers. 43 The poem printed with William Hogarth’s 1723 Masquerades and Operas similarly bemoans the shift from “the fruitfull Theatre of old [where] Rival Wits contended for the Bays” to the use of theatres for operas and masquerades: “Shakespear’s or Ben Jonson’s Ghost [would] blush for shame, to see the English Stage Debauch’d by fool’ries” (see figure 2). 44 See Miss Chudley (figure 6) for a representation of the assumptions of female immorality in masquerade and its link to risks of physical dangers for women and violent temptations for men.

28

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

Those who responded to the Bishop of London’s sermon from the other direction included Heidegger himself in Heydegger’s Letter to the Bishop of London, defending “That harmless Pastime, Masquerade” (4). Like other defenders, Heidegger makes the argument that life itself is a masquerade, and nothing is lost by admitting that everyone is always in some state of performance and disguise: The world it self, excuse the Phrase, is A Ball; where, mimick Shapes and Faces, The Judgment of our Sense cheat, And Fashion Favours the Deceit … Then, my good Lord of L----n, why In this Age should You and I Dispute, since ’tis so necessary To change our Forms, and Habits vary?”

(20–3, 43–6)

Heidegger redirects the bishop’s fruitless moralizing attention back to the theatre, suggesting more social benefit if the bishop were “Like brave Don Quixot, to engage / The darling Windmill of the Stage” (48–9).45 Heidegger’s short piece does not assert a moral impulse for the masquerade, but rather a truthfulness about human nature that parallels quite 45 Another position in the discussion is represented by Thomas Gordon, the anonymous author of a series of essays titled The Humorist: Being Essays upon Several Subjects, which went to its third edition in 1724. Gordon’s speaker positions himself as a moralist against masquerades, but with a satiric tone that renders his take a useful middle position, not unlike that of Haywood. Like the bishop’s sermon and the Essay on Plays and Masquerades, The Humorist notes the moral and social dangers of the masquerade, but uses those dangers and the tight social regulations that make disguise so inviting to make arguments on human nature and to offer a modest proposal for a different kind of masquerade ball, where Instead of impertinent and ill-judg’d Affectations, which are at present practis’d, to make Persons appear what they are not, it is apprehended that Gentlemen and Ladies may much better, as well as much cheaper, disguise themselves, by appearing to be what they really are … Mankind is ever mask’d without knowing it. We learn to disguise ourselves in Childhood. Good Breeding is nothing but putting on the Vizard well, and good Manners is only wearing it handsomely. We seldom lay it aside even when we are alone, as though we were afraid of seeing our selves naked … If such an Assembly were to divest themselves in this Manner, and to speak and act naturally, and without Restraint, no wonder they would be disguis’d to their intimate Friends, for they would appear but very new Acquaintance even to themselves. (200–1)

Introduction: Life in Excess

 29 

nicely Haywood’s own use of the masquerade as a plot device in novels that seek to illuminate the prescriptive cultural fictions that regulate women’s experiences. A final example from 1724 is perhaps also the most important to the argument that follows, about the place of masquerade in broader discourse about women and about popular culture. The anonymous A Seasonable Apology for Mr. H----g--r. Proving the usefulness and Antiquity of Masquerading from Scripture, and prophane History is a satirical take on the masquerade, asserting support for the practice while associating with it a catalogue of acts of deceit and trickery from biblical contexts such as the serpent in Eden, to classical narratives like the sexual identities inhabited by Zeus, and military accounts such as the Trojans and their horse (as an act of mass masquerade). The body of the apology recites a long series of such examples as ironic evidence for the essential nature of masquerade, but more significant to our consideration of Haywood’s engagement of masquerade is the fact that the Seasonable Apology is bookended by documents explicitly identifying women as the arbiters of the function and value of masquerade: a dedication to famed bawd Mother Needham, and an appended “Report from the Committee appointed to state and examine the Advantages arising from our present Masquerades” written by a “Committee of Matrons … The Countess of Clingfast, Chairwoman” (21). The dedication to Mother Needham indicates that “only one of your Calling was proper to my Purpose” of defending masquerades. The author locates the core of the masquerade in female immorality as he notes that “Masquerade is so properly yours, and so much your Concern, that if it is not your own Child, ’tis really your Nursery.” As is clear from the other 1724 examples, the association of immorality and prostitution with masquerades is not at all unusual, but even an ironic dedication to a woman is important when paired with the faux report appended to the main essay. Leading into the “report” is the assertion that Heidegger cannot be accused of having “debauch’d the People” as “he found them already debauch’d to his Hand, or he could ne’er have succeeded as he has done” (20–1). The matrons’ report then documents the masquerade’s supposed health benefits for women: “above eight hundred Females cur’d of that ill-favour’d Distemper, call’d the Green-Sickness” (an illness specifically associated with virginity), and another 600 with “Obstructions” who have found “a pleasing, safe, and effectual Cure.” The report also describes 137 barren women made fruitful, and records remedies for 400 women with impotent husbands and 95 women unable to “entertain their husbands”: “Resolv’d then, That ’tis the Opinion of this Committee that these Entertainments have a

30

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

very great Tendency, to make Ladies capable of pleasing their Husbands” (20–3). Women were afflicted with “Spleen and Vapours, till by frequenting these masquerades, where they could assume the Liberty of talking, what pleased them best, without blushing, they have found Amendment of Health” (23–4). In these ways, masquerades are good for marriages, the report asserts, and even cases of separation because of mutual dislike are “provided against in Masquerades; because, if any Man dislikes his own Wife, he may there have the Use of almost any other Man’s, he finds present; and likewise, the Wife to [sic], may be furnish’d with an agreeable Variety” (25). In the Seasonable Apology, a conservative attack on masquerade is rendered through ironic enthusiasm. The addition of the appropriated female voice, however, further implies corruption and insignificance through association with the feminine: a woman’s endorsement, especially in terms of the female body and its specifically gendered ailments like green sickness and obstruction, spleen and vapours, asserts a parallel emptiness and corruption. The Masqueraders and The Surprize as Re-formation of Cultural Narrative Haywood’s The Masqueraders is an explicit salvo in the masquerade debate, emphasizing in the first part the dangers of the masquerade for women who are too confident in their freedom, like the widow Dalinda, or in their intellectualism and reason, like Philecta. In Part II, the country wife Lysemina falls to the temptation faced by the neglected and unattended spouse, but the novel ends with Briscilla, a woman who has mastered the masquerade and uses it both at the event and – as Heidegger and Gordon both recognized – throughout her life to assert a specifically feminine power through conscious performance of self-serving modes of identity.46 As is so often the case in criticism of Haywood’s works, these inconsistencies among characters lead to conflicting readings of female sexuality and agency. Castle, for example, argues for the masquerade as a conduit

46 Anderson links Haywood’s text and life through this performance of identity: “Haywood was the consummate, perpetual performer; like her Fantomina, she refuses to unmask, and she frustrates all our attempt to unearth the ‘real’ Haywood from beneath the various constructed personae. Yet in understanding Haywood’s career as a series of purposefully adopted roles … we learn from her texts how she felt about female performance, [and] we learn, by considering her texts as performances, how her texts ought to be read” (12).

Introduction: Life in Excess

 31 

to interrogation of socially agreed-upon notions of the feminine. In masquerade, women could make an abrupt exit from the system of sexual domination. For a brief, charged moment, the masquerade suspended the archaic patterns of Western gender relations. In the exquisite round of the assembly room, a woman was free to circulate – not as a commodity placed in circulation by men, but according to her own pleasure … The masquerade symbolized a realm of women unmarked by patriarchy, unmarked by signs of exchange and domination, and independent of the prevailing sexual economy. (Masquerade 255)

Certainly this is the world in which Haywood’s characters believe themselves to be participating, and as the 1724 accounts make clear, this is also the world in which commentators on masquerade feared women were participating. For most of the characters in Haywood’s novels, however, the freedom of the masquerade is actually a mirage, a temptation that pulls them deeper into the desert of sexual risk and the suffering that nearly always follows illicit, even if temporarily empowering, masquerade adventures. In contrast to Castle’s sense of the masquerade, Catherine CraftFairchild has argued that Haywood’s “representations of female disguise conform very closely to the negative view of masquerade as the painful submission of women to the dominant economy of male desire … Masqueraders exposes female victimization and, at the same time, repeats it” (55). The novel, she argues, erases female identity as “[c]onfusions of identity at new masquerade assemblies again emphasize that all the women in this text are interchangeable, for they function solely as repositories for Dorimenus’s desire” (58–9). My own sense falls between these two positions: as expected in the amatory genre, Haywood’s novel replicates the salacious attractiveness of the equal-opportunity liberty promised by the masquerade. But at the same time that she criticizes the patriarchal systems that make the masquerade the only place that such equality is possible, she also naturalizes and encodes the same punishing conservative norms that enforce submission everywhere else. Each of the women in The Masqueraders indulges in the charms of Dorimenus, but each does it for her own individual reasons. Dalinda, Philecta, Lysemina, and Briscilla are all vulnerable, but each is used to re-narrate a different popular cultural fiction of femininity. Close consideration demonstrates the ways in which Haywood’s narrative stance reflects the contradictory impulses of her culture, using the medium of the masquerade to examine social narratives: the widely

32

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

understood stories and expected endings that are taken as natural and normative by a given community. The type of naturalized social fictions that Haywood’s novels take on reflect the conventional expectations of what happens when a country girl comes alone to the city, or a young apprentice drinks too much, or a coquette flirts to excess, or any number of “what else did you expect” scenarios. In some cases, Haywood replicates the presumptive norm in a way that appears conservative, and in others she either subverts the norm or represents it in a way that emphasizes male fears of female desire. In both instances, though, even as the women are punished, the emphasis is on an unfairness or failure of regulatory social systems rather than on corrupt women. Haywood’s novels put to self-conscious use the shared elements, requirements, and implications of literary fiction and social fictions. Haywood’s most-anthologized story of the manipulation of social narratives is the 1725 novella Fantomina, in which her heroine self-­consciously manages the cultural narratives of the innocent country girl in the city, the poor chamber servant, the defrauded widow, and the sexually empowered aristocrat, all through role playing and disguise.47 Where Fantomina has one woman acting out a series of cultural narratives in repeated seductions of the same man, however, The Masqueraders divides a similar set of characterizations into different characters: both texts have a widow, a country girl, and at least one intelligent, beautiful young woman who mistakenly believes that she can control all situations through wit or virtue or reason, with a bit of help from masks and disguise. Dalinda is in what Haywood often represents to be the enviable position of the widow, financially and socially independent, free of supervision by father or husband. At the masquerade in the novel’s opening scene (pages 68–70 in this edition), Dalinda “fell down in a fainting Fit, in the midst of a croud of Gentlemen.” The narrator suggests that this is not a sign of feminine weakness, but rather a stratagem, one of those “fashionable Distempers, which are often of great service to make a Woman be taken notice of.” The story is performed as the dramatic rules of such a scene demand: “Her Mask must now be taken off to give her air,” and her body is displayed “------a thousand dimpled Charms play’d round her lovely Mouth-----a thousand little Loves laugh’d in her shining Eyes … her Neck, her Breasts, her fine-proportion’d Hands and Arms-----there was no part of her expos’d to view, that did not discover a Beauty peculiar to itself.” While

47 See Croskery on Fantomina and cultural fiction.

Introduction: Life in Excess

 33 

Dorimenus’s heart has been “set on fire” the narrator grants the agency in the initial liaison to Dalinda: Dorimenus reads her desire in her eyes and “did not disoblige her in refusing her Request.” She is “by nature pretty amorous,” and so she chooses to “grant what, perhaps, she wish’d with no less Ardency than him who ask’d it.”48 The scene is clearly one between two characters who know each other’s stories (by convention and perhaps by gossip, as “she had often heard of Dorimenus”), and are performing for those who watch them a scene of a frail woman escorted home by a courtly gentleman, even as it is so easily recognized as that other dramatic plot of licentious widow and libertine: “Two Chairs were immediately call’d, and he had the Satisfaction of publickly triumphing o’er a Number who wish’d to be in his place, as in his own Thoughts he doubted not of doing so in private over all those Scruples Virtue, Fear or Honour might raise in her Breast to the prejudice of his Desire” (emphasis Haywood’s). This single sentence establishes a great deal about Haywood’s popular iteration of the libertine in Dorimenus, and sets the tone for the rest of the novel. The italic emphasis on the public nature of Dorimenus’s triumph reminds us that for the libertine, the private is public, all fodder for Haywood’s recreation of even the most powerful aristocratic man as an object of women’s fiction. In fact, the initial encounter between Dalinda and Dorimenus is written in a way that offers Dalinda a sense of power and dominance that is exactly parallel to that of Dorimenus over the “Number who wish’d to be in his place.” Especially in the establishing opening paragraphs of the novel, Dorimenus is the objectified site of women’s sexual competition. With all of his attractiveness and accomplishments, he seldom went [to a masquerade] without his appointment, and it often hapned that three or four Ladies would give him a description of their Habits, each in hope to be the Favourite She, which should that night be singled out, and triumph o’er the rest in his distinguish’d Addresses. This Ambition was sometimes the occasion of a good deal of confusion in his Amours, the jealous watchfulness of one would frequently deprive him of his pleasures with another.

Dorimenus is the prize in a competition of women, and perhaps not even that, as – in Dalinda’s case at least – he is initially less valuable as a romantic partner than as a symbol of her own power of attraction. So when Dalinda 48 In a brief discussion, Kukkonen uses theory of the mind to argue for this scene as an instance of character revelation through what she calls “mind-games” in the characters as part of Haywood’s “larger programme of educating her readers in the passions” (165).

34

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

faints in front of him, a group of “Nuns, Gypsies, [and] Queens” gathers to intervene in the moment. When her mask is removed, even in her apparently faint state, she triumphs: “’Tis difficult to determine, whether, at the first plucking off her Mask, the sight of her Face gave greater Motives of uneasiness to the Men or the Women which were about her; those only who have experienced what it is to love or envy, can be judges what kind of pains the one felt in a hopeless Desire, or the other in seeing themselves so far outrivall’d.” Dalinda’s pleasure is in that moment as much as in the moments of physicality that follow. Dorimenus leaves the ball confident that he can prevail “in private over all those Scruples Virtue, Fear or Honour might raise,” but Haywood’s omniscient narrator has informed us in the previous sentence, “she had none but such as were inspir’d only by a fear of appearing too free.” Dalinda chooses to act in public her role in the frail-woman narrative so that she can move on her own (lack of) conventional moral scruples to enjoy the fruits of her victory over the other women at the masquerade. Dorimenus and Dalinda do fall in love, and for several months enjoy a monogamous, if illicit, sexual relationship. But the romantic pleasures are not enough for Dalinda: she seeks to regain the pleasure of dominance over other women through telling every detail of every encounter to her friend Philecta. Dalinda raises his name in every conversation, “But all this fell short of the Satisfaction she wanted:------Her Soul, full of his Charms, wild ’twixt Desire and Transport, could not contain the vast Excess.------She long’d to impart the mighty Bliss; she panted to pour out the overwhelming Transport” (73). Through this need, Dalinda creates Philecta’s desire for Dorimenus and sets in motion the plot that leads to the end of her own relationship with Dorimenus. More important, the gossip between the two women raises another specifically feminized and specifically devalued mode of eighteenth-century discourse in a way that illuminates not just popular cultural practices and understandings, but also the relationship between women’s writing and the popular. Gossip is perhaps the most stereotypically feminine form of discourse, and Patricia Meyer Spacks has documented the ways in which gossip is associated “unambiguously and officially with women” in the eighteenth century (26). For Spacks, “serious gossip” is a form of intimate conversation that takes place “in private, at leisure, in a context of trust, usually among no more than two or three people” and typically addresses the topic of absent acquaintances (5). The primary function of this sort of gossip is not to promulgate information, Spacks argues, but rather to enact, sustain, and solidify bonds among those participating in the exchange. Haywood’s depiction of Dalinda’s ecstatic descriptions of Dorimenus’s sexualized body asserts differences between male-only and

Introduction: Life in Excess

 35 

female-only relationships, and then makes clear that Dalinda’s downfall is only partly a product of Dorimenus’s inconstant nature, and much more a product of her own failure to uphold the values of female-female friendship. Like Dalinda, Dorimenus also shares the stories of his relationship, but the straightforward half-sentence in which Haywood reports that Dorimenus “had a very great intimacy with a Gentleman” to whom he “communicated the whole Affair” (77) cannot begin to compare to the relationship between Dalinda and Philecta, and the intricate detail with which Dalinda “related to her the particulars of her Happiness, [and] felt in the delicious Representation, a Pleasure, perhaps, not much inferiour to that which the Reality afforded” (73). Both scenes involve the communication of secrets, but only for the women is the exchange depicted as the sort of “serious” gossip that establishes relationships. Dalinda’s error appears to be that she misunderstands the function of power in the deployment of gossip. In the novel, information and knowledge (particularly the private knowledge conveyed by gossip) are forms of social power over the one whose secret has been shared. For Dalinda, talking about Dorimenus serves only the goal of showcasing her beauty and desirability and “with what a God-like Sublimity of Passion he ador’d her” (73). In addressing Philecta, Dalinda needs to “make her sensible” of her triumph (73), but she seeks to control the implication and flow of information too closely, driven by the pleasure of proving her superiority rather than by the solidifying of same-sex bonds. Dalinda requires that Philecta fantasize not about having Dorimenus, but about being Dalinda, and thus refuses her requests to observe an encounter with or to meet Dorimenus. A self-identified woman of reason, Philecta must then seek out substantiating information for herself by disguising herself as Dalinda and meeting Dorimenus at the second masquerade. She initially seeks to “be able to form a more exact Judgment of his Sentiments and Humour” than Dalinda is willing to provide, and then when she masks her own hand in counterfeiting a message from Dalinda, she indulges her “Curiosity” and her need “to know something more” (78). Dalinda’s obsessive need to share her pleasure and yet to control its consumption makes clear that she is not driven by the sort of female friendship that we see in The Surprize,49 but rather by her “entire dependence” 49 The Surprize is also, of course, driven by one woman telling her tale to another, but Alinda is more conscious than Dalinda or Philecta of the pejorative associations of gossip: as a mark of her true friendship for Euphemia, Alinda not only makes a promise, but has “put it out of my power to gratify that Inclination too many of our Sex have for blabbing every thing that has the Appearance of a Secret” (136).

36

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

upon Philecta to bear “the dear burthen of this Secret” (36). The burden proves too much, not least because Dalinda does not acknowledge the dangers of attempting to domesticate a rake like Dorimenus, and Philecta fails to prove those dangers to Dalinda, falling into them herself instead. At the end of the first part of The Masqueraders, Philecta bemoans “the Measures which her Curiosity had prompted her to take” (78) and in so doing she laments the dangers of gossip. Her story also, however, embodies the danger that some conservative readers perceived in amatory fiction: creating a false sense of worldly knowledge and an erroneous confidence participating in that world. The relationship between Dalinda (the narrator of her stories) and Philecta as audience echoes that between Haywood (the narrator of Dalinda’s story) and her reader. Both women recount a scandalous story centred on the experience of women for a specifically female audience, each seeking, as Ballaster notes of amatory fiction more generally, to engage her “female reader’s sympathy and erotic pleasure, rather than stimulate intellectual argument” (170). The Dalinda-Philecta friendship conveys the complexity of amatory fiction and popular culture in miniature, concurrently acknowledging the pleasures that audiences find in the popular and the dangers that more conservative and artistically elite groups located in devalued stories and storytellers. Just as the text of The Masqueraders does, both Dalinda and Dorimenus narrate to others stories of their encounters (one with consequences and one without), establishing the parallels between private gossip and popular fiction that retells similar stories. Like the masquerade and other institutions of popular culture, the storytelling of amatory fiction is a “double movement of containment and resistance” (Hall, “Notes” 456): it conveys the dangers of producing and consuming fictions of identity and stories of courtship and seduction, but concurrently recognizes that though the novel at times defers to the requirements of moral convention, the reader may or may not choose to do so. As the audience for Dalinda’s outbursts, Philecta stands in for the reader, believing from her own experience and from the stories she has read that she knows how this narrative ends. And yet she is tempted. Before the events of the novel, she has been deceived by a man “with Professions of much the same nature with those her Friend seem’d now so certain were sincere, [and so] listen’d to her at first only with Compassion, not doubting but that in a very little time she should hear from her as many Expressions of Complaint as now she did of Rapture” (73). But from what we can tell, Philecta’s was the story of the Persecuted Virgin, while Dalinda’s is that of the Licentious Widow, and Philecta is moved by jealousy when

Introduction: Life in Excess

 37 

the story does not come to the punitive suffering that she expects will be the next chapter. Dalinda’s story gives her “sufficient Reason to complain of the Severity of her own Fate” (74), but Philecta works hard to imagine herself as the concerned friend seeking to prove Dorimenus’s infidelity, though she knows herself that she desires to become the heroine of Dalinda’s story, seeing herself as superior to her friend in all but beauty. Of Haywood’s many contributions to the early English novel, one of the more substantial is the countering of the assertion that “every woman is at heart” the same.50 Whether taking on Pope’s famed articulation of woman as rake, or conduct manuals’ naturalization of female innocence and frailty, Haywood writes women not as creatures determined by social, religious, educational, and moral forces, but rather as individuals with their own self-constructions and ethical considerations about the relationship between their desires, their culture, and their actions. Dalinda is a woman driven by her passions and the conscious belief that, as a widow, she can pursue love for its own sake, outside of the usual guardianship of father or husband. Philecta, on the other hand, has been a woman scorned, and Haywood provides substantial detail on the rational intellectual processes behind Philecta’s decision to betray her friend and to pursue her subsequent affair with Dorimenus. Philecta’s character is described not in conventionally feminized language, but in gender-neutral, even masculine adjectives: she is a woman of “Wit, Generosity, and Good-nature” (77) who has “at last, set free her Mind from a Passion which had been so destructive to her Peace” (74). She is a “Foe profest to the Sex” (78) who sees herself as guided by reason as she attempts to test the loyalty of her friend’s lover. She reads Dalinda as having all of the failures popularly associated with frivolous women: she “has nothing but a Face to recommend her-----she has no Wit-----everything she says is trifling-----all her Notions are poor and insignificant” (74). Philecta actively separates herself from that notion of the feminine as she self-consciously reviews the “Arguments she made use of for and against him in her Mind” when she decides to meet him to “be able to form a more exact Judgment of his Sentiments and Humour, than all she could gather from Description” (75). She develops a “stratagem”

50 Pope’s Moral Essay II (“To a Lady: Of the Characters of Women”) asserts, Men, some to Bus’ness, some to Pleasure take; But ev’ry Woman is at heart a Rake:     Men, some to Quiet, some to public Strife; But ev’ry Lady would be Queen for life. 

(215–18)

38

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

to manipulate Dalinda’s desire for admiration: in her need to be thought beautiful, Dalinda will accept the presence of Philecta’s “artful Creature,” who will delay Dalinda’s arrival at the second masquerade through slow and meticulous attention to her costume. As Philecta schemes to meet Dorimenus at the masquerade, she counts on her “Discernment” (76) and her power to manipulate his understanding to manage the situation. The meeting is brief, but even as she finds herself in love, she interprets her desire to see him as “no more than the effect of a Curiosity ungratify’d … [and] she resolv’d to be satisfy’d, and try him to the utmost, whatever shou’d be the Consequence” (79). In her next act of masquerade, forging Dalinda’s hand, Philecta invites Dorimenus to her home, feigning surprise when Dalinda does not attend them. She fusses about which “Fashion she thought most becoming,” but she continues to articulate her concern over her “extravagance of Dotage” through her sense of herself as a creature of reason: “She was not sure she should always be able to refuse the melting Pressures of this dangerous Charmer.------She fear’d the Effects of a Desire so wild and ungovernable----and justly doubted the Force of Reason” (83). But despite her violent passion, immediately thereafter “said she to herself … Virtue, Honour, Religion, Reputation are at stake [… and] Reason therefore enabling her to consider that the only way to conquer [her desire] was to fly” (84). Similarly, when she confesses all to Dalinda, she explains that her resistance to Dorimenus depends on the assumption that “Reason … may certainly enable one to do a great deal” (88). Had the story ended here, with the two women banding together against the temptation of a seducer, the effect might be much the same as that of Haywood’s The British Recluse, a story of women bonding in seclusion against the dangers of men and the public world, or perhaps The Surprize, with the two working together to overcome misunderstandings and to marry good men. But Philecta has disguised her motives even to herself, and her narrative of female friendship collapses when she pursues her affair with Dorimenus: her story is one of betrayal and punishment.51 Philecta’s witty and rationalized scheming lets her down because she is too dependent on artificial constructions of reason in herself and others: 51 In a brief discussion of The Masqueraders as part of her argument on “Sapphic narration,” Susan Lanser reads the Dalinda/Philecta relationship in some of these same terms, but she also raises the intriguing possibility that in Dalinda’s retellings “a heterosexual story is refracted to become, in a narrational sense, an experience ‘between women’ … so that the text becomes the narration of a double pleasure, of heteroerotic act and homoerotic repetition” (499).

Introduction: Life in Excess

 39 

that Dorimenus will eventually reason her a good choice for a wife, and that Dalinda will reason that she has too much to lose herself by revealing her one-time friend. Philecta and Dalinda both live out cautionary tales as they make what the first part of the novel unmistakably identifies as the error of surrender to passion, but Dalinda interprets the world through explicitly femininized pleasure and passion and Philecta through masculinized values of reason and stratagem. That we spend so much time observing Philecta’s thinking processes is what makes their experiences informative despite their differences: the deck is stacked against both of these women, regardless of the view of the world they take, and regardless of how they approach the pursuit of desire. In the first part of The Masqueraders the world-upside-down of the masquerade gives them the opportunity to make choices, but ultimately that opportunity for pleasure only affirms that a woman’s identity, whether public or private, intellectual or emotional, is determined in Haywood’s world by gender before all. Dalinda and Philecta, then, are participants in a fairly conventional narrative of feminine hubris told through the unconventional metaphor of masquerade,52 and those who read only the first part of The Masqueraders reach very different conclusions from those who read both parts. Dorimenus’s relationships in Part II make the retelling of cultural narratives more interesting: he marries country girl Lysimena and brings her to the big city, and then begins his pursuit of the witty coquette Briscilla, who manipulates Dorimenus’s desire through masquerade, just as he has manipulated the desires of the women who came before her. Already something of a variation on the convention of the innocent and vulnerable country girl, Lysimena is quite conscious that she marries Dorimenus at least in part because she wants to partake of both the elite and popular pleasures of the city. They bespeak a fine coach to “make their Equipage appear the Envy of the Ring, as their Persons were of the Circle” and as they leave the country, both realize that “the Passion which

52 Though Croskery argues for the persecuted maiden story of amatory fiction as “the ‘emotional negative’ of Restoration comedy” (76), in fact, the plot of The Masqueraders is very similar not just to Restoration comedy generally, but specifically to the most famous libertine comedy of the era: Sir George Etherege’s The Man of Mode in which the anti-hero Dorimant serially seduces two women who have been friends for years. The second woman facilitates the abandonment of the first, only to watch Dorimant leave for the country at the end of the play in pursuit of Harriet, a witty country girl. Like The Masqueraders, Etherege’s plot depends on self-conscious performances of identity and role playing.

40

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

each had profess’d for the other, was not of so Romantick a nature, as that the Completion of it was sufficient to compensate for the want of all other Pleasures in Life.” From the beginning, then, Lysimena and Dorimenus eschew the delusion that domestic pleasures might replace more public ones. For Lysemina, in fact, the city’s “new, the so much talk’dof, these untasted Joys, were all she languish’d to possess; and without which, even Dorimenus, dear as he was to her, would not have had the power to content her Wishes” (104); this is fortunate because once he arrives in London “the natural Inconstancy of his Temper return’d as soon as he had opportunities to renew those dear Delights which Variety affords.” Dorimenus remains a libertine, pursuing Briscilla by giving her masquerade tickets, and his wife follows his model of married city life: “tho’ her Husband did not give himself the trouble of procuring her a Ticket, she was not without those, who thought her accepting one a Favour … as Dorimenus had not been complaisant enough to invite her to go, she did not acquaint him with her Intentions to do so” (107). In each case, the would-be seducer uses the ticket to invite the woman into a space that represents an authorized world of sexual intrigue. As Castle points out, in the form of the ticket, the illicit potential of the masquerade functions as a commodity, and the masquerade ticket would later become emblematic in sentimental fictions as a “fetishized corrupter of virgins” (Masquerqade 11).53 Lysimena enters the first masquerade expecting “Diversion,” but, country wife that she is, she lacks knowledge and is soon out of her depth, first seduced by the friar Dorimenus, then fought over by Dorimenus and two other men in a scuffle that requires the intervention of Heidegger himself. Even more so than in the first part of The Masqueraders, Dorimenus’s relationships with the two women overlap, and Briscilla has first disappointed Dorimenus by failing to appear in her agreed-upon costume as a nun, and then has taunted him as a gypsy. Later that evening, she frustrates him again by seeking his protection from other men and then declining his company after he escorts her to a chair. Briscilla’s rejection drives Dorimenus back to the nun, and leads to the most coercive scene in the book, in which Dorimenus vents his sexual frustration by forcefully redirecting it onto the woman whom he does not recognize as his wife: “he

53 See figure 5 for William Hogarth’s 1727 satirical take on the masquerade ticket, including details such as the cuckold’s horns, a “sacrifice to Priapus,” and the “lecherometers” at each side of the room.

Introduction: Life in Excess

 41 

had the Casket in his power, [and] would not part with till he had enjoy’d the Treasure.” Haywood’s narrator excuses Dorimenus from a charge of rape by suggesting that “when she struggled with his Hands or Lips, it was not in a manner which a Woman who thought herself affronted would have done … The wanton Fryar satiated his utmost Wish,------but it was in such a manner, that the fair Nun could neither accuse herself of a too-easy granting, nor him of an absolute Force in taking” (113). The coach scene embodies the impossible negotiation required of a desiring woman: she is not allowed to consent, and he is not allowed to force her, which leaves such scenes in a dangerous state of negotiation and mis/communication. The coach scene also forces that ambivalence onto the reader, who might be expected to struggle between titillation and horror, just as Lysimena does. As Ballaster has noted, in such amatory scenes the “distinction between moral conversion and illicit sexual excitement is collapsed” as “‘the distinction between the flush of an improper excitement and the virtuous blush of an entranced sensibility is a difficult and shifting one’” (Seductive Forms 166, quoting Mullan). The coercion of this scene requires that the reader’s response move beyond these two aspects and incorporate anxiety and distress or shock. The reader’s anticipated embodiment of Lysimena’s ambivalence is essential to the didactic weight of the scene and to its function as a retelling of the narrative of masquerade regret that informs both anti-masquerade discourse and prescriptions of female enclosure: “the mask secures the Ladies from Detraction, and encourages Liberty, the Guilt of which their Blushes would betray when barefac’d till by Degrees they are innur’d to that which is out of their Vertue to restrain” (Weekly Journal 19 April 1718). That Lysimena is eventually caught by Dorimenus after the second masquerade in a compromising situation with his friend Carlos, disguised as Dorimenus in disguise, confirms the conservative impulse here: she has not repented of her error, but has sought to repeat it, and as her character type would imply, she is not worldly enough to avow “her Crime, and vindicat[e] it from the Example of her Husband” (127). She pleads female weakness in the face of male wit, affirming that, as with Philecta and Dalinda before her, ideas of female sexual autonomy sprung from widowhood, from reason, or from the socially sanctioned practice of the masquerade are all finally illusory. As the novel ends, however, that didactic frame is shaken, as Briscilla, being “perfectly acquainted with the Character of Dorimenus” (107) is able not only to manipulate his desire, but also to manage the capacity for self-fashioning that was so central to defences of the masquerade.

42

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

Dalinda’s excessively direct self-exposure with both Dorimenus and Philecta causes both her pleasure and her eventual abandonment, and Philecta is victimized though non-consensual exposure in Dalinda’s vengeful gossip (and in the biological exposure of her pregnant body). Briscilla, though, consistently manages scenes to see instead of being seen. At an assignation planned with Dorimenus, “instead of appearing in the Habit she had made him believe, [she] put on the Resemblance of a Gipsy” and then “cast her Eyes on … the amorous Fryar, busily engaged among a Crowd of Ladies” (108). The characters who achieve success in the masquerade setting not only attempt to use the masquerade to evade social regulation and pursue pleasure, but manage to deflect the gaze from themselves so that they can become active observers rather than objects of exposure. Briscilla’s rendering herself invisible to Dorimenus through a change of costume makes visible through inversion the conventional power arrangements of courtship and seduction. Like Thomas Gordon in The Humorist, Briscilla seems confident that “Good Breeding is nothing but putting on the Vizard well, and good Manners is only wearing it handsomely” (Gordon 200). And though Gordon goes on to note that “we seldom lay [the mask] aside even when we are alone, as though we were afraid of seeing our selves naked,” Briscilla appears absolutely conscious of the costuming of her identity. She is “Mistress of a great deal of Wit,” in a culture that assumes that “That Mistress ne’er can pall her Lover’s Joys, / Whose wit can whet whene’er her Beauty cloys” (128). Like all popular media, Haywood’s fiction constitutes culture rather than just reflecting it, and through the stories of these four women, the two parts of The Masqueraders both police existing norms and interrogate their inconsistencies. Haywood achieves this effect particularly well by spinning to her own advantage one of the standard objections to amatory fiction: repetitiveness.54 Amatory fiction often tells the same story over and over, and it is of course possible that Briscilla is ultimately as vulnerable as the other women whom Dorimenus has abandoned. But in Briscilla lies also the suggestion that sexual agency may be possible for a certain type of woman who can translate the power of self-consciously 54 Warner has typified formula fiction or fiction with repeated plots as “books written in anticipation of their own obsolescence, and in acceptance of their own transient function as part of a culture of serial entertainments” (“Elevation” 579). The very disposability of popular genres creates market for future iterations and interrogations of the cultural narratives such texts represent. This notion of the disposability of popular texts is also argued of Fielding’s Shamela by Keymer.

Introduction: Life in Excess

 43 

performed identity outside of the masquerade space and into her own life.55 The Masqueraders tells and retells the story of the woman who desires not just one particular man, but the capacity to access a man and the larger world that he represents. Haywood adapts both this simple plot and the larger cultural narratives of eighteenth-century England such that her novel can reinforce and undermine social norms in the same narrative moment. Adaptation theorists Linda Hutcheon and Jill Sanders have considered the implications of such “repetition without replication” (Hutcheon xviii) that requires “both memory and change, persistence and variation” (173): readers are required to know how the story is supposed to go so that they can be conscious of the significance of the variants that make each adaptation valuable as an independent work. It is true that Haywood’s novels are not formal adaptations in the conventional sense, but ideas of adaptation allow us to articulate the implications of her practice of “re-telling.” Her narratives work in two ways that embody the contested and sometimes self-contradictory place of women in eighteenth-century literary culture. First, they constitute and police culture, as cultural determinators: what J. Hillis Miller terms “perhaps the most powerful of ways to assert the basic ideology of our culture” (72). And second, they provide what MarieLaure Ryan calls the “timeless cognitive models” that help people to make their own way through the world and to make sense of our place in it, even as we rewrite the universal in the specific context of the individual (242). Together Haywood and the stories of Dalinda, Philecta, Lysimena, and Briscilla assert conservative ideologies and enforce the dangers of desire, of hubris, and of the falsified permissions of the masquerade; but in the same narrative moments they provide models of independent thought and decisions, for better and worse, that can facilitate individual responses to those ideologies. A different sort of representation of these relationships among women and the demands and narratives of their culture, The Surprize has received very little critical attention beyond passing mentions, but the novel concisely debunks that old sense of Haywood as a writer who started with salaciousness and ended with a virtuous reformulation of 55 Craft-Fairchild rejects this possibility emphatically: “Disguise donned ‘for real,’ costume intended to direct the male gaze toward what the female identifies as her genuine self – either for illicit union, as with … Dalinda and Philecta in Eliza Haywood’s Masqueraders, or for marriage … serves only to objectify women and lock them into the system of exchanges controlled by men” (172).

44

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

her fictions. Though The Surprize was published in 1724, Haywood offers a vision of courtship and seduction distinct from that which is offered in The Masqueraders, Fantomina, Love in Excess, and most of her fiction from the 1720s. She tells the story of Alinda and Euphemia, two virtuous women who create for themselves good marriages to loving, virtuous, and generous men, using the same devices of female gossip and friendship, secret messengers, jealousy, and masking that are so often the tools of salacious intrigue in Haywood’s other novels. The narrative tension of the story, in fact, depends on a reader’s assumed knowledge of Haywood’s more usual strategies and on the cultural narratives of the dangers of unknown men and competition among women in circles of courtship. Euphemia’s sad tale, which occupies most of the first half of the novel, includes all of the milestones of the sort of amatory fiction that educates readers and warns them away from social error with the cautionary tale of a seduced and abandoned woman.56 Euphemia herself is aware of the didactic traditions of such narratives, and has “read a great deal of [love’s] Influence” (139). As she tells her story “which, Shame only has kept me from revealing” (135) she is no longer the woman of “sprightly Wit, and Gaiety of Disposition” that she once was, but is in a mood of “heavy Languor” (135). And so when she begins with mention of the “several who called themselves my Lovers,” and cries “Dear-bought Experience! how hast thou undone me?” the framework for a rape, kidnapping, or seduction story is well established. She enjoys Bath as a young woman “naturally of a Disposition rather too gay and spirituous” until “these empty Pleasures ceased, one fatal Moment robb’d them of their Joys, and taught me to despise the gaudy, noisy Nothings, and send my Soul in search of Happiness more elevated.” The handsome Bellamant offers her “passionate and tender Declarations” and she is so driven by the “force

56 While didacticism was in many amatory texts a position claimed primarily to create a virtuous cover for salacious reading, Bowers points out the potentially genuine function of amatory fiction as social guide. She notes that in the eighteenth-century marriage market, “desirable young women must by definition be entirely naïve about sexual matters. Like the culture that produced them, amatory works placed young women in a double bind: without sexual experience, they are the natural prey of more experienced male predators; with sexual experience, they are whores. A young woman in Augustan society, after all, could not actually experiment with the other sex and keep her good reputation, not even so far as to hold a private conversation, receive a letter, or be seen in a public place in the company of a man” (“Sex, Lies” 52).

Introduction: Life in Excess

 45 

of raging, burning Love” that she “imprudently consented to meet a Man alone, a Man whom I had never seen but that Day, and whose very Name I was yet a stranger to” (137–41). Knowing both amatory conventions and those behind conservative regulation of female conduct, the reader can be forgiven for experiencing what is perhaps the Surprize of the title when the private meeting results not in what Alinda suspects and even Euphemia knows she should have half-expected, but in formal introductions and Euphemia’s granting Bellamant permission to “prosecute an honourable Pretension” (142). A fully chaperoned courtship and proposal follow, and settlements are arranged, all without a single unvirtuous moment. A similar pattern of expectation is established in the overarching narrative of Alinda, Ellmour, Euphemia, and Bellamant, but it is a version of the pattern that explicitly echoes the model of Sir Richard Steele’s 1722 play The Conscious Lovers in which Bevil Junior (like Alinda here) attempts to arrange events so that both he and his friend Myrtle can marry the objects of their desires without violating social or economic decorum. Just as Myrtle challenges Bevil because he believes that Bevil is pursuing Lucinda, Ellmour mistakenly believes that Alinda loves Bellamant, and drags him off to a field to do battle over honour. And while Bellamant does not respond with the eloquence of Bevil’s speech on the pleasure of friendship over the passion of dueling, the fruitlessness of the duel is re-asserted. Such a tribute makes sense, of course, given that the novel is dedicated to Steele, and that according to Haywood’s dedication, Steele’s role has been to “teach us how to Think, as well as Act; and by inspiring us with just and noble Sentiments, render it impossible to behave in a manner contrary to them” (emphasis Haywood’s). Haywood’s dedication would seem to echo Steele’s own claim in the preface to The Conscious Lovers that the “chief design of this was to be an innocent performance,” though the second half of The Masqueraders (and most of Haywood’s novels published over the next decade) might counter the dedication’s purported dismay at “the Trifles I have hitherto been capable of producing.” Haywood takes on the standard self-deprecating flattery of dedicators as she asserts that “all I can do, is, to prove that I have the Will, but want the Power to please” (emphasis Haywood’s). The Surprize, of course, demonstrates that Haywood indeed has the power to write moralist sentimental fiction; evidently the rest of the time she chooses not to do so. Demonstrating both her artistic range and the substantial overlap between culturally approved didactic writing and widely devalued amatory narrative, The Surprize is also notable for the way in which it repurposes Haywood’s well-practiced facility with writing the body and the

46

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

physiology of desire.57 Initially fulfilling readers’ expectations, Haywood describes Euphemia’s focus on “the Exactness Of his Shape, [and] the manly Majesty [that] sparkled in his Eyes” when she first spies him, clothed only in a rich night-gown, and in her “greed … to gaze upon his Charms … every throbbing Vein swell’d with the new, the soft Desire” that “took from me the Power of Thought” (139). After her heart is broken, she falls into a fever and extended unconsciousness, and though she is eventually “restor’d to that bodily Health I enjoy’d before … [I] never must hope to recover the Disorders of my Mind” (146, emphasis Haywood’s). In virtuous suffering, Euphemia’s body and mind are both fully engaged, a situation paralleled by Bellamant, who writes an anguished letter when he decides that he cannot condemn the woman he loves to a life without wealth and his estate. Just as she has been “eager … to gaze upon his Charms,” he “must resolve to gaze no more.” His extravagant language of suffering echoes the language of sentiment that Steele had so recently popularized in the characterization of Bevil: Bellamant values “Goodness” in his “Divine Creature,” and seeks to “die in the severest Torments” rather than cause pain to the virtuous: “O! I’m on the rack while writing this.------How was it possible I should speak it then?----Pardon me! Pity me! ’tis all I ask for the extremest Proof of Love a breaking, bleeding Heart e’er gave” (144). Haywood replicates Steele’s language of sentiment and noble feeling, but infuses it with the bodily detail of Euphemia’s veins and Bellamant’s blood, rendering visceral the elevated and abstract values that typify Steele’s more privileged and more authoritative voice. The dedication that so clearly articulates the issue of moral didacticism in the relatively new genre of prose fiction, then, is followed by a plot that self-consciously tempts the reader and then repurposes conventional amatory plot elements, characters, and language to shift the balance of the always-doubled didactic and titillating effects of women’s romances. Even as Haywood asserts a lack of “power,” she demonstrates absolute control over convention and establishes the fluid nature of the implications of the standard elements of print and oral tradition that had so long been used to constitute social norms through narrative. The Surprize ends with a heavy-handed moral statement that “Constancy on all sides [was] 57 As Luhning documents, “Haywood depends on corporeal evidence to construct and complicate the emotional and social journeys of her characters. In particular, she challenges cultural assumptions that men and women have fundamental differences in regard to physical and emotional experiences of desire” (154). See also Ahern, Affected Sensibilities and Harvey, Reading Sex, as well as Bocchicchio, “Blushing.”

Introduction: Life in Excess

 47 

Rewarded” in a way that “gave a Proof, that Possession does not always extinguish Desire.” She would also appear to be entirely conscious of the generically unconventional conventionalism of this ending, which – like Haywood herself – “supriz’d the World with an Example, which I am afraid more will Admire than Imitate” (161, emphases Haywood’s). In The Surprize Haywood communicates social prescription through the sort of good example of virtue rewarded that Samuel Johnson and Samuel Richardson would later praise and replicate,58 rather than through the warning offered by tales of the pleasure and punishment of sexually ambitious women that was expected of Haywood in particular and of women’s popular fiction in general. In addition to depicting popular culture in a way that illuminates the intersections of notions of the popular, social rank, and their gendered implications, in The Masqueraders and The Surprize Haywood also quite explicitly translates specific examples of high culture into popular forms for audiences outside of the elite circles that were typically assumed to consume and to benefit from the moral and aesthetic good of high art.59 Haywood’s recontexualization of quotations from Dryden, Pope, and Addison functions as a form of adaptation: she interrogates the material in its first form as she relocates it into a specifically feminized genre at the same time that she interrogates the whole question of hierarchies of artistic value. Andrea Austin notes in her essay on Betsy Thoughtless and parody that “the attitude was that male writers were more apt to produce original

58 Johnson famously asserts in The Rambler that novels “may perhaps be made of greater use than the solemnities of professed morality, and convey the knowledge of vice and virtue with more efficacy than axioms and definitions. But if the power of example is so great, as to take possession of the memory by a kind of violence, and produce effects almost without the intervention of the will, care ought to be taken that, when the choice is unrestrained, the best examples only should be exhibited; and that which is likely to operate so strongly, should not be mischievous or uncertain in its effects.” Richardson’s example of Pamela’s poor but honest virtue strives to overwrite the salacious didacticism of earlier fiction by women, with which he was evidently familiar: the ESTC records evidence that Richardson printed volumes 1 and 4 of the third edition of Haywood’s collected Secret Histories. The Surprize appeared in volume 3, and The Masqueraders in volume 4. 59 Critics like Fielding and Pope, however, might suggest that she is bastardizing and commodifying those goods: in a discussion of Betsy Thoughtless, Richetti argues even of this most respectable of Haywood’s fictions, the “domestic and marital realism of a sober sort … derives precisely from a narrative perspective Fielding doubtless would have disdained as literal-minded and vulgar” (“Histories” 258).

48

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

works of genius, whereas female authors could only either repeat others’ stories or copy down stories based on the pattern of their own lives – could only offer imitations or relations rather than truly creative works” (273). In The Masqueraders and The Surprize, as in most of her novels, Haywood regularly incorporates references to the work of some of the most highly valued members of eighteenth-century London’s intellectual and artistic elites, including Addison, Dryden, Pope, and Waller. By incorporating (or arguably appropriating) quotations from these figures, Haywood translates their high ideals for a more popular readership. In some cases, Haywood’s references establish a direct correlation among the situations and implications of her scene and that of her reference; in others, the allusion implies a hypocrisy or error in the original. In both formulations, the colonization of a more highly valued text in her popular fiction suggests a critical engagement, showing the similar implications of popular genres and more valued social forms: they address the same human natures, values, and social issues, often reaching the same conclusions and teaching the same lessons. Unsurprisingly for novels by an author so familiar with the world of the theatre, Haywood’s novels often quote successful plays in ways that illuminate the characters and conflicts in her narratives. Both parts of The Masqueraders and The Surprize quote John Dryden’s heroic plays, for example, to a range of effects.60 In one instance in Part II of The Masqueraders, there is a fairly direct correspondence between the quotation’s implication in its original context and in Haywood’s usage. Dorimenus has “very much fallen off from his Passion for his Wife” (106) but cannot be persuaded to return to any of the lovers he has abandoned in his past. Haywood’s narrator informs us, “He was of that opinion which Mr. Dryden has made Morat, in his excellent Play of Aureng-Zebe; To Love once past, I cannot backward move, / Call Yesterday again, and I may love” (106). Dryden’s Morat is a would-be usurper who undergoes a fifth-act conversion in which he denounces his ambition, but he declines to return to his wife Melesinda because his conversion has been driven by his relatively sudden virtuous love for the heroine Indamora (V.i 124–5). Morat dies after saving Indamora’s life, and Melesinda ends the play planning to throw herself onto her unfaithful husband’s funeral pyre. 60 It may be possible to argue that some of Haywood’s quotations come from a decontextualized source such as Edward Bysshe’s 1702 Art of English Poetry. However, Haywood’s familiarity with the theatre as both a playwright and actor provides a strong possible provenance for both first-hand knowledge of successful plays and a consciousness of the hierarchies among theatrical genres. Her later work on the genre satire The Opera of Operas supports my sense of her ability to put that consciousness to work as a literary device.

Introduction: Life in Excess

 49 

Haywood’s comedy requires a different end, of course, but both Morat and Dorimenus are characters who fall between conventional modes of heroism and villainy. Morat is a villain reformed in public but not in domestic character, and Dorimenus an anti-hero whose powerful attractiveness drives the libertine plot even as his monstrous disregard for others renders him villainous by most standards of eighteenth-century morality. In this reference, Haywood’s narrator communicates exactly the sort of knowledge that critics like Fielding would argue is essential to those “who lawfully may, and of those who may not, write histories such as this,” conveying knowledge of both great literature and the philosophical complexities that it is written to convey. A similar effect of knowledge has been conveyed in the first part of The Masqueraders: in Dorimenus’s initial seduction of Dalinda at the first masquerade, the validity of the choices made in a moment of “violent” passion by a widow “who was by nature pretty amorous” is substantiated by a line from Dryden’s heroic tragedy The Indian Emperor: The Poet says –––––––––––––––––––––––––––In Love there is a Time When dull Obedience is the greatest Crime. (69)

In Dryden’s play, however, this line is spoken not by the heroes Guyomar and Montezuma, or by the virtuous heroine Alibech, but by Guyomar’s ignoble brother Odmar, in a speech defending his choice to flee battle, ostensibly to protect Alibech, whom he loves. Alibech, however, hates Odmar – not least for his cowardice – and thus in context his speech asserts its opposite: even love is no excuse to abandon honour. In such instances of opposition, two readings are possible. The first is that the narrator misunderstands the implications of Dryden’s scene, problematizing the assumption that these sorts of novels can be read in dialogue with the heights of art signified by Dryden’s dramatic epic. Alternately though, one might interpret the allusion as a very specifically framed engagement of exactly the notions of privilege and superiority that Dryden’s play embodies. Haywood’s allusion explicitly regenders Odmar’s rejection of obedience to martial honour into Dalinda’s rejection of feminine virtue as obedience to sexual social standard. In both scenes, disobedient self-indulgence in the name of love is an error that ends in dishonour and abandonment by the beloved, but the allusion establishes the parallel functions of male martial honour and female sexual honour in determining public identity. In so doing, Haywood momentarily affirms the tragic quality of Dalinda’s abandonment and the near-epic significance of these sorts of defining moments in female experience. The gap between

50

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

the implied tragedy of the allusion and the sense of personal power that the language surrounding Dalinda conveys is the gap in which so many of Haywood’s narratives exist. It is the gap embodied by masquerade in this novel: an invitation to pleasure, of the appearance of freedom and pleasure that a few women can turn to a near-libertine site of power, but that will doom most to the tragic end demanded by the hubristic sense that a woman might have the capacity to manipulate a wide-reaching system of social regulation and punishment. Other examples of Haywood’s manipulation of high culture forms come on the title pages. The Surprize quotes another of Dryden’s heroic tragedies, Alzmanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of Grenada, The Second Part. In its first edition, the first part of The Masqueraders quotes what was a more recent epic tragedy, Joseph Addison’s 1713 Cato: When Love once pleads Admission to our Hearts, (In Spight of all the Virtue we can boast) The Woman that deliberates, is lost.

Part II quotes the mock epic, The Rape of the Lock: What guards the Purity of melting Maids, In Courtly Balls, and mid-night Masquerades; Safe from the treacherous Friend and daring Spark, The Glance by Day, and Whisper in the Dark: When kind Occasion prompts their warm Desires, When Musick softens, and when Dancing fires!

Both passages comment on a woman’s dilemma: the need to make a good marriage, the increasingly acknowledged desire to have a love match, and the danger of navigating the rituals of flirtation and courtship in a way that affirms desire in the eyes of the beloved (so that she does not lose out by excessive deliberation), without transgressing the allowable paths of virtuously marriageable femininity. In Cato, though this dilemma is very much secondary to the play’s political impetus, this dilemma is addressed sympathetically and discussed by young women who exhibit classical understandings of nobility and virtue. Pope’s version is famously unsympathetic as it regenders the epic with an opening question that defines all things feminine as insignificant: “What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things” (I. 2). Although the historical model for Belinda, Arabella Fermor, was Roman Catholic and thus in a rela-

Introduction: Life in Excess

 51 

tively weaker position in the marriage market even with her family’s wealth, Pope’s Belinda is very clearly of the cultural and economic elite. Even so, the poem portrays the feminine as intrinsically frivolous, and Pope’s mapping of Belinda’s domestic trial onto Homer’s Iliad, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Milton’s Paradise Lost asserts that even women of privilege can have no valid claim to true high culture. Christina Knellwolf has suggested that Pope’s attitude toward women is significant not just as an individual position, but in the way that it illuminates what women were understood to represent in eighteenth-century England. In The Rape of the Lock, she argues, “Pope’s objective is to render an image of existence that is void of meaningful life” and “all those elements which are offensive to Pope’s understanding of women may appear like horrid perversions and parodies of that which is good and meaningful” (195).61 In my own reading, particularly of the scene at Belinda’s toilette, Pope does not deny the pleasures of the pretty and the trivial, but his accounting of Belinda’s world asserts emphatically that no matter what her status, Belinda is merely a woman, and that everything that she touches is rendered trivial by association.62 Pope’s own dedication asserts this strategy specifically when he explains that “the ancient Poets are in one respect like many modern Ladies; Let an action be never so trivial in it self, they always make it appear of the utmost Importance.” Pope would soon make his disdain for Haywood personal in The Dunciad, but in quoting him on her title page, Haywood twists Pope’s words to her own agenda, using his fame to market her own work, and cropping his quotation into an exclamation of excited agitation at the very thought of the melting bodies of young women softened by warm desires. It is surely not coincidence that nearly all of the texts to which Haywood alludes in The Masqueraders and The Surprize are highly valued re-articulations or adaptations of the epic, its conventional subjects, or its formal conventions,63 including Dryden’s heroic stage epics64 and 61 Price offers a similar summary, more forgivingly phrased: “The world of Belinda is a world of triviality measured against the epic scale; it is also a world of grace and delicacy, a second-best world, but not at all a contemptible one” (7). 62 See Potter, “Historicizing,” 11–14. 63 The only exception to this pattern is the closing couplet of The Masqueraders Part II, a quotation from George Farquhar’s 1699 comedy about fidelity in courtship, The Constant Couple, or a Trip to the Jubilee. 64 Dryden argued for heroic drama as epic adapted to the stage in his essay “Of Heroique Plays.” Haywood’s The Surprize quotes still another of Dryden’s heroic tragedies on its title page, Almanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of Grenade, The Second Part. See title page note [page 131].

52

The Masqueraders and The Surprize

Addision’s Cato, along with Pope’s mock epic, as well as direct references to two sixteenth-century variations on the epic: Sidney’s epic romance, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia and Ludovisto Ariosto’s Italian epic Orlando Furioso. In reminding the reader of these successful adaptations, as mixtures of the elite intellectualism of epic with the audience demands of theatre or the presumptively low art form of pastoral, Haywood stakes claim to the right to revise known forms. In parallel to Sidney’s translation of the humble pastoral to epic stature, she creates unexpected intersections between the genres and cultural practices associated with distinct modes of culture. Haywood’s pointed pattern of allusion denies the presumptive impermeability of the wall between elite and popular and rejects the assumption that difference automatically demands devaluation. The masquerade was eighteenth-century England’s universally recognized site for the mixing of men and women of high and low status, in a circumstance that could be destructively immoral and pleasurably empowering at the same time. Haywood uses the masquerade as a simple device of narrative drama: as an of-the-moment setting for the querying of social demands, especially upon women; and as a parallel to the genre of the early novel and early print culture, both also sites in which women might well have otherwise unknown freedoms, but where those freedoms must be recognized to come with risk and cost. This overlapping of different versions of the same cultural contests is consistent with the twentieth and twenty-first century theorization of popular culture in which “popular culture is made by subordinate peoples in their own interests out of resources that also, contradictorily, serve the economic interests of the dominant” (Fiske 8). In such a formulation, the popular is the culture produced by the subordinate as they consume the dominant culture, embodying both contest and collaboration, celebration of subversion and recognition of the inescapable quality of social regulation. Like the masquerade and other institutions of popular culture, the storytelling of Haywood’s novels is that “double movement of containment and resistance” (Hall 456); read together, her 1724–5 masquerade fictions articulate the tension between resistant individual agency and passive incorporation in response to prescriptive ideas of culture. Texts like The Masqueraders and The Surprize engage many of the defining assumptions behind the presumptive moral benefits of high art and elite culture, and turn them into fodder for the least-valued form, making heroic epic, conservative values, and moral regulation into parts of popular discourse, even as the novels imply the arbitrariness of contemporary valuations of both genre and gender.

 53 

Figure 1: George Vertue, after James Parmentier. Mrs Eliza Haywood (ca. 1725). By permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London. NPG D13931

54

Figure 2: William Hogarth. Masquerades and Operas (1723). Courtesy of La Clé des langes (Clifford Armion, dir.) and ENS Media (Vincent Brault, photo). The following lines were attached to some versions of this print: Could new dumb Faustus, to reform the Age, Conjure up Shakespear’s or Ben Johnson’s Ghost They’d blush for shame, to see the English Stage Debauch’d by fool’ries, at so great a cost. What would their Manes say? should they behold Monsters and Masquerades, where usefull Plays Adorn’d the fruitfull Theatre of old. And Rival Wits contended for the Bays. Shakespeare, Wycherley, and Dryden are among the names of the texts in the waste paper wagon that passes the masqueraders literally being roped into the building by a devil, while those across the street are tempted to foreign-associated operas represented by the devil’s temptation in Dr Faustus.

 55 

Image removed at the request of the rights holder

Figure 3: Anonymous. The World in Masquerade (1720). © Trustees of the British Museum. 2004,0331.1 Here may the Wand’ring Eye with pleasure See Both Knaves and Foolls in borrow’d shapes agree; How Lords and Ladies wave their wonted Pride, And walk with Jilts and Bullies side by side. Here the Vile Atheist, to the World’s Surprise Puts on a Bishop’s Robe for his disguise With lude and idle talk profanes the same And Nods his Mitre at some fav’rite Dame. The Statesman that Commands his Prince’s Ear, Descends to Harlikeno’s Jacket here And at the Helm he shares the Mighty Rule, In Masquerade Submits to play the Fooll. Here Lords in Footmen’s Liv’ries meet the Fair, And Show us what their real Father’s were. Court Highborn Ladies who for change of food

Can Chew Coarse Diet if the Sause be good. Here Tender Beauty Wedded to an old Decrepit Fumbler, for the Sake of Gold To th’ Tavern tempts some vig’rous Youth & there Displays her Charms in Hopes to steal an Heir. Here City Wives, disguised in Widows Weeds Look out for Sparks to Men their sev’ral breeds; These no advantage of their favours make, Sin not for Gold but Kiss for Kissings Sake. Here Drury Punks for Maiden Ladies pass, And dress’d like Nymphs decoy the Am’rous Ass. He singles out his doe She grants the Prize, And with venereal Trophies crowns his Joies. Thus all the World for Intrest, Love or Fear, Conceal themselves and in disguise appear.

56

Figure 4: Giuseppe Grisoni. Masquerade on the Stage of the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket (1724). © Victoria and Albert Museum

 57 

Figure 5: William Hogarth. Masquerade Ticket (1727). Courtesy of La Clé des langues (Clifford Armion, dir.) and ENS Media (Vincent Brault, photo).

58

Image removed at the request of the rights holder

Figure 6: Anonymous. Miss Chudley, Maid of Honour to the Princess of Wales, in the character of Iphigenia at the Italian Masquerade in ye Daytime at Ranelagh Gardens in June 1749 (1749). © Trustees of the British Museum. Miss Chudleigh’s costume for the 1 May 1749 Jubilee Masquerade created a scandal, and is depicted in several illustrations. Various accounts describe her as scantily clad in transluscent fabric, uncovered, and naked to the waist. This image conveys the physical danger for women associated with the masquerade, and depicts a visor and domino (centre) and harlequin costume (right). On masquerade costuming beginning slightly later in the century, see Ribiero.

 59 

Figure 7: Henry Morland. The Fair Nun Unmask’d (ca 1770). Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. George Morland’s nun wears elaborate jewellery, including a large jeweled cross that draws attention to her low neckline. The mask depicts prominent lips and two beauty marks (or patches). A patch near the mouth was understood to suggest flirtation, but the one on the right cheek would conventionally indicate that the woman is married. See Sherrow on the fashion of patches.

This page intentionally left blank

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 63 

Title page of 1724 first edition

THE MASQUERADERS; OR FATAL CURIOSITY: BEING The Secret History of a Late AMOUR.

When Love once pleads Admission to our Hearts, (In Spight of all the Virtue we can boast) The Woman that deliberates, is lost.1 ADDISON’s Cato.

LONDON; Printed for J. ROBERTS, near the Oxford-Arms in Warwick-Lane.2 M.DCC.XXIV. (Price one Shilling.)

1 This epigraph appears only on the 1724 first edition (Ab.12.1, the copytext here). A quotation from Alexander Pope appears in all subsequent editions (see second title page, following). The lines are from Joseph Addison’s 1713 play Cato: A Tragedy IV.i, in which Lucia, the daughter of Cato’s ally Lucius, and Cato’s daughter Marcia discuss their anxiety over the risk of being married off to men they do not love. 2 On Roberts, see the “Note on the Text and Publication History,” page vii. See also Spedding’s Bibliography of Eliza Haywood, and Backscheider, Introduction, for a shorter history of Haywood’s publishers.

64

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

Title page of 1725 Secret Histories edition

THE MASQUERADERS: OR, FATAL CURIOSITY. BEING The SECRET HISTORY of a Late AMOUR.

What guards the Purity of melting Maids, In Courtly Balls, and Midnight Masquerades; Safe from the treacherous Friend and daring Spark, The Glance by Day, and Whisper in the Dark: When kind Occasion prompts their warm Desires, When Musick softens, and when Dancing fires! POPE.3

By Mrs. ELIZA HAYWOOD.4

______________________________________________

3 The Pope epigraph replaces the Addison in all editions after 1724. In the opening canto of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, Belinda’s guardian Sylph lists the dangers from which the Sylphs, “wise celestials,” protect the “fair and chaste” though “men below” mistake mystical protection for “honor” (I. 67–78). 4 The 1724 first edition does not name Haywood on the title page, but her name appears on the title page of all subsequent editions, as the abbreviated “Mrs. Eliza. Haywood” in 1725, and then as “Mrs. Eliza Haywood” beginning in the 1732 edition.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 65 

To the Right Honourable Col. S T A N L Y,5 One of his MAJESTY’S Privy-Council of the Kingdom of Ireland. Sir, V A R I O U S are the Views, which Authors have in Addresses of this Nature; and considering the Disposition of the present Age, and the Scarcity of Worth to countenance those extravagant Encomiums in Fashion6 among Dedicators, many must be extreamly at a loss for even the shadow of an Excuse for making them.------How will therefore the less Fortunate envy my happy Choice of a Patron, where I have nothing to fear, nothing to regret, but my own Inability of praising as I ought?7 To be Spoke well of by all, is to be a Prodigy which I know not if History affords us one Example of: The over-spreading Wings of foul Detraction reach from the Cottage to the Throne, and shed a Venom almost Universal; but You, Sir! are an Exception to this general Rule: and tho’ there are but few, too few, who imitate your Virtues, there are yet fewer who wish they were less------The Reason of this is obvious, and needs not an Explanation: You have Perfections too necessary to the Interest of the World, not to render the Person possess’d of them admir’d, and lov’d.------That uncommon Beneficence of Nature, that soft Commiseration which induces you to make the Woes of all Mankind your own, (with this difference alone, that you are more zealous for the Redress of others Grievances, than you wou’d be inflicted on your self) takes

5 Backscheider’s Selected Fiction identifies the subject of Haywood’s dedication as Colonel James Stanley (xvii), but there is another possible identification. While Colonel James Stanley fits the identifying features in being a colonel in the Sixteenth Foot, and without a male heir, his wife, Mary Morely (d. March 1752), is very much alive in 1724, when Haywood writes this consolation on the death of a beloved spouse. James Stanley and Mary were married in February 1704/5, and there is no evidence that he was married before that. Colonel James Stanley was appointed to Privy Council in 1706, but not in the “Kingdom of Ireland” specified by Haywood. A second candidate is Colonel Stephen Stanley, a widower who was appointed to the Irish Privy Council in 1723. The spelling is altered to “Stanley” in 1725 and subsequent editions. 6 A formal expression of praise. Haywood tacitly acknowledges the artifice involved in praising a patron even as she begins an elaborate instance of the form. 7 Punctuation is changed to a period in 1725 and subsequent editions.

66

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

away all possibility of becoming your Enemy, without being as much so to one’s own Interest, as one should be to Justice. If to be a loyal Subject, a firm and worthy Patriot, a Father to the Orphan, a Dryer of the Widows Tears, a Friend without design, and a Reliever in general of all those Oppressions which reach your Ear; if, I say, to merit such a Character, be to be dear and valuable to the World, it is not to be wonder’d at, that you should never be mention’d but with Veneration, nor thought of but with the highest Regard. But in the midst of that Pleasure, which the Contemplation of all, who are so happy as to know you must afford, there arises also a melancholy Reflection, that when we shall have the Misfortune of losing you, there springs no second Phœnix from your Ashes. How vast a mitigation of our Sorrows wou’d it be, did you leave us a Son, the Inheriter of his Father’s Virtues:8 I dare not mention those Graces which might be expected to have been his Portion from the other side, else, for the glory of my Sex, should gladly touch, as far as my weak Pen wou’d give me leave, on some of those many excellent Qualities, which render’d her the Pride and Ornament of it; but she now shines in a sublimer Sphere, the Companion of Angels, the Delight of those above, as she was the most eminent Pattern of Perfection here: And to remind you of so irreparable a Loss, wou’d be far from answering the End which the Trifle, I take the liberty of presenting you with, was design’d for. I shall therefore add no more, than that I am, with the greatest Respect, S I R, Your most Oblig’d, Most Faithful, and Most Obedient, Humble Servant.9

8 Punctuation changed to question mark in Dublin edition of 1725. 9 The first edition’s dedication is unsigned; subsequent versions are signed “Eliza Haywood,” except for the Dublin edition.

The Masqueraders: or, Fatal Curiosity.

GREAT-BRITAIN has no Assembly which affords such variety of Characters as the MASQUERADE; there are scarce any Degrees of People, of what Religion or Principle soever, that some time or other are not willing to embrace an opportunity of partaking this Diversion. But among the number of those who pretty often frequented it, was a Gentleman, whose real Name, for some reasons, I shall conceal under that of d ­ orimenus:10 He is young, handsome, gay, gallant, has an affluence of Fortune and of Wit,11 is a passionate Lover of Intrigue, and ’tis not to be doubted but that with all these Accomplishments, he found a great many among the Fair Sex to encourage that disposition: He seldom went there without his appointment, and it often hapned that three or four Ladies would give him a description of their Habits,12 each in hope to be the Favourite She, which should that night be singled out, and triumph o’er the rest in his distinguish’d Addresses. This Ambition was sometimes the occasion of a good deal of confusion in his Amours, the jealous watchfulness of one would frequently deprive him of his pleasures with another. He was

10 Possibly an aural allusion to Dorimant, a character from George Etherege’s Restoration play The Man of Mode, the most famous rake (anti)hero of Restoration theatre, reported at the time to have been based upon the life of the notorious libertine John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Haywood would re-use the name in Love Letters on all Occasions (1730), in which Dorimenus’s single letter (number 37) argues for love at first sight. 11 Eighteenth-century notions of wit go beyond cleverness to imply a combination of intelligence, understanding, judgment, and liveliness of intellect. As Alexander Pope puts it in his Essay on Criticism, “True wit is Nature to advantage dressed, / What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed; / Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find, / That gives us back the image of our mind” (297–300). 12 Costumes for the masquerade.

68

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

never without Embarrassments of that nature: It took up great part of his time13 in reading, and answering the Reproaches and Complaints he daily received from those who thought themselves slighted; and if his Thoughts and Pen had not been equally swift, he would soon have had no leisure for new Attacks. By a very great chance, one evening he went, entirely disengaged, to this Scene of Gallantry;14 but Fortune, who seemed glad of this opportunity to get the start of Love, threw an Adventure in his way, which at his coming there he little thought of. A fine Shepherdess, whose Bon Mien15 had attracted the eyes and addresses of a great number of the Assembly, either thro’ being too strait lac’d, or the extreme heat of the place, for there was a great deal of company that night, was so overcome, that she fell down in a fainting Fit in the midst of a croud of Gentlemen, who had gathered round her: dorimenus was among them, and was one of the first that endeavoured to bring her to herself. He was too well acquainted with the Sex, to be a stranger to Vapours, Spleen, and those other fashionable Distempers,16 which are often of great service to make a Woman be taken notice of, when nothing in her beside is found worthy of observation, and was provided with a Bottle of Spirits17 in his Pocket: Her Mask must now be taken off to give her air, and tho’ by this time the accident had drawn Nuns, Gypsies, Queens, and a confus’d medley of all Conditions and Professions to her assistance; it was to his efforts she was indebted for so speedily recovering. It was he who had the honour of holding her in his Arms, during that little deprivation of Sense! It was he who had the 13 Corrected to “took up a great part of his time” in 1732 edition only. 14 Gallantry conveyed multiple implications in the eighteenth century, and is used in different ways at different points in Haywood’s work. Gallantry traditionally connotes noble and genteel behaviour, as well as the codes of chivalry, but also refers to illicit romance and seduction, and at times specifically to adultery. 15 Attractive face and bearing. 16 Distemper is a non-specific illness or ill humour, encompassing the examples of vapours (a general term for nervous disorders often associated with hypochondria or malingering) and spleen (peevishness or ill temper). Both having the vapours and fits of spleen are associated more with women than men, typified as they are here as devices to get attention rather than serious illnesses. Whether or not she really is ill, as a widow, Dalinda might be thought more susceptible to such distempers, as eighteenth-century physicians asserted that marriage reduced the risk of nervous disorders by reducing idleness and creating a healthier lifestyle (Hare 40). 17 Aromatic spirit of ammonia, a mixture of ammonium carbonate and perfume akin to smelling salts, occasionally carried in small bottles and used to relieve faintness. See London Pharmacopoeia (1720) for early documentation of the medical use of spirits.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 69 

pleasure of perceiving her returns of Life, and catching the first Sigh which issued from the struggling Soul!----’Tis difficult to determine, whether, at the first plucking off her Mask, the sight of her Face gave greater Motives of uneasiness to the Men or the Women which were about her; those only who have experienced what it is to love or envy, can be judges what kind of pains the one felt in a hopeless Desire, or the other in seeing themselves so far out-rivall’d. Nature never form’d Features more compleatly lovely than those of this Fair indisposed,----------all the Graces seem’d assembled in her Countenance,----------a thousand dimpled Charms play’d round her lovely Mouth,----------a thousand little Loves laugh’d in her shining Eyes,----------the Delicacy of her Complexion exceeded all comparison,----------her Neck, her Breasts, her fine-proportion’d Hands and Arms,----------there was no part of her expos’d to view, that did not discover a Beauty peculiar to itself.----------The little Confusion and those modest Blushes which attended it, added somewhat to the Lustre of her native Charms; she thank’d all those who had been aiding to her recovery, with a Voice so full of Harmony, and a Look so sweetly innocent, that it had a wonderful effect on all; but dorimenus, whose Heart was easily set on fire by the sight of the least kindling Beauty, cou’d not behold Perfection, such as hers, without feeling an excess of that Passion it was created to inspire;----------former Successes gave him a greater boldness than is ordinarily the consequence of Love.----------He was too well acquainted with his own Power of pleasing, to suffer thro’ a fear to offend; and while the others bow’d and retir’d at a becoming distance, that she might have leave to recover those Disorders, which her late Swoon, and the Shame for being so surpriz’d, had thrown her in, he still continued holding her in his Arms,18 excusing himself for doing so, by telling her he fear’d she was not yet perfectly well, and that he cou’d not consent to leave her without support, ’till he was assur’d she was entirely past danger of a Relapse. The Poet says, ---------------–––---------In Love there is a Time, When dull Obedience is the greatest Crime.19

18 Revised to “he caught her in his Arms” beginning in 1725, except the Dublin edition. 19 John Dryden, The Indian Emperor III.i. 39–40. The line is spoken by Odmar, defending his decision to flee battle under the guise of protecting Alibech, the woman he loves. She, however, hates Odmar and loves his more noble brother Guyomar, who has stayed to fight for Montezuma and his nation.

70

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

Tho’ this Lady entreated and struggled to get loose, he easily read in her Eyes, those infallible Betrayers of the Heart,20 that he did not disoblige her in refusing her Request: He entertain’d her with so much Wit and Gallantry, and the appearance of so violent a Passion, that she, who was by nature pretty amorous, and easy to receive an impression, cou’d not fail a susceptibility of Charms, which there are very few in the world to equalize. She had often heard of dorimenus, had seen him at a distance, and ’tis probable wish’d to be address’d by him in the manner she now was: She had not artifice enough to disguise the pleasure she took in his Conversation, from a Penetration so nice,21 and so experienced as his. He made his advantage of those Glances which she could not restrain, and desirous of being inform’d of what Character22 and Circumstances she was, made use of all his Eloquence to persuade her to permit him to accompany her home: had she any real Scruples to oppose what he requested, he had Wit enough to find Arguments against them; but as she had none but such as were inspir’d only by a fear of appearing too free, and consequently but faintly urged, was not long before she suffer’d herself to be prevail’d on to grant what perhaps, she wish’d with no less Ardency than him who ask’d it. Two Chairs were immediately call’d,23 and he had the Satisfaction of publickly triumphing o’er a Number who wish’d to be in his place, as in his own Thoughts he doubted not of doing so in private over all those Scruples, Virtue, Fear, or Honour, might raise in her Breast to the prejudice of his Desire. Being come to her House, (which was a very handsome and wellfurnish’d one) the Obligations she lay under for the Care he had taken of her, serv’d as an excuse for the extraordinary Reception she gave him.----------There was nothing the Season afforded of rich, and rare, but she order’d for his Entertainment; and he easily had the Address to draw from her in Conversation so much of her Affairs, as to know she was a Widow,24 20 In a commonplace of amatory fiction, the eyes disclose the secrets of the heart. 21 Precise. 22 Character: reputation and reported personal qualities. Circumstances: information such as marital status, family standing, and wealth. 23 Sedan chairs, enclosed chairs situated on two horizontal poles and carried by two men, could be hired on the street for short journeys. 24 Eighteenth-century conduct manuals often indicated three phases of a woman’s life: virgin, wife, and widow. As daughter or wife, a woman was legally the property of her father or husband; in widowhood, a woman could live without such formal supervision, and often could control her own fortune or a family business. As such, particularly in theatre and fiction, widowhood was often represented as a status of freedom that enabled autonomy and licentiousness. On widows in fiction, see Gevirtz, Life and Death.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 71 

and liv’d wholly independent of the Favour of any Relation whatever.---------This Information not a little pleas’d him, there was no danger of any Father or Husband to interpose between him and his Designs;----------all he had to apprehend, was, that as they both were single, she might expect that were he really possess’d of that Passion he would have her believe, he would make Overtures of a different nature to those he ever had done to any, and which, as lovely as he thought her, were no way agreeable to his Humour.--------------------As he was perfectly acquainted with the World, and in particular with the Foibles, Passions, and Inadvertencies of the Fair Sex; he thought the surest Method of succeeding in such a Case, was not to give her time for Reflection. He therefore press’d her with all those soft undoing Insinuations: those melting Tendernesses, those seducing Arts which Desire never fails to instruct.----------Few Men, how dull and stupid soever they appear in other things, but have Artifice enough this way:---------But dorimenus, as he had a share of Wit infinitely superior to most of his Sex, so he had also a Face and a Person which render’d the Blandishments25 he made use of more graceful and persuasive: All Eyes become not Love;26 some, instead of the impressive Languishment27 they would assume, degenerate into a heavy Dullness, rather forbidding, than exciting the Passion they would raise; but his, whatever Air they wore, were always charming!----------whether the gay Delights of Hope revell’d in their Glances, or trembling Doubt aw’d their contracted Fires in down-cast Languishment!-------whether they seem’d to triumph or beseech, they were enchanting still!-------every kind of Look transporting! Vast was their Power, and numberless the Conquests they had gain’d!---------dalinda,28 (for so shall I call the present Victim of their force) had not Arguments sufficient to confute the Strenuousness of those he urg’d, and even Reason seem’d to take the part of Love.--------------------In fine, that very Night he compleated his Conquest, and got possession of all those Joys the glorious Prize could give.----------The God of tender Inspirations with pleasure beheld the Sacrifice was made him, and blest the amorous Pair with double Vigour, and uncommon Rapture.-------The happy dorimenus

25 Flattery or otherwise pleasing speech. 26 Not all men’s eyes are suited to communicating passion. 27 Expression of longing and desire. 28 Possibly an aural allusion to flirtatious dalliance. Haywood re-uses the name in Love Letters on all Occasions (1730) as the object of a letter from Strephon typifying her as a tyrant of love after she orders him not to speak to her.

72

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

confess’d a Transport29 beyond what he e’er felt before, and the unrepenting Fair avow’d her lovely Conqueror’s unequal’d extent of charming. Both were so highly satisfied with each other, that I know no way to make the Reader so truly sensible of it, as to repeat a few Lines which dorimenus, who at some times was very poetically inclin’d, writ on the Transactions of this Night, and happen’d, a few days after to shew to some of his Friends, which to the best of my Remembrance run thus: An amourous Pair with mutual Warmth inspir’d, Alike desiring, and alike desir’d, Clasp’d in each other’s Arms, resolv’d to know Th’ extremest Bliss which Nature can bestow: Love made the Banquet, each a hungry Guest, With greediness devour’d the luscious Feast! While their full Eyes with Extasy ran o’er, Enjoying all, yet craving still for more! Joys too sublime for Language to express, And which even Thought itself must render less.

’Tis certain that for a time they had for each other, Charms which they imagin’d were not to be found elsewhere; she really doated on him with a Transcendency of Passion, and he, tho’ ever accounted the most roving and inconstant of his Sex, prefer’d the Conquest of her Heart to all the others he had made, not only because it was the last; but also that when he consulted his Judgment, he knew of none that had the thousandth part of her Merit;----------for some Months he devoted himself entirely to her, and in all probability she might much longer have continu’d the reigning Mistress of his Soul, had she not herself been accessary to her own Misfortune, by a Mismanagement, which those who love, as she did, to Madness, can hardly avoid falling into.----------There is nothing in the world more difficult than to forbear talking of that on which our Thoughts are continually employ’d; and as the Idea of her belov’d dorimenus was never from her Mind, no Conversation was pleasing in which he had not a part.-------Whatever Company she happen’d to be in, she always found some pretence to make him the Theme of her Discourse, and even among those who were the greatest Strangers to him, would invent some way

29 “Ecstatick violence of passion” (Johnson’s Dictionary).

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 73 

to introduce his Name.--------------------But all this fell short of the Satisfaction she wanted:----------Her Soul, full of his Charms, wild ’twixt Desire and Transport, could not contain the vast Excess.----------She long’d to impart the mighty Bliss; she panted, to pour out the overwhelming Transport. philecta, a young Lady, on whose Wit, Generosity, and Good-nature30 she had an entire dependence, was the Person she made Choice of, to be intrusted with the dear burthen of this Secret; and while she related to her the particulars of her Happiness, felt in the delicious Representation a Pleasure, perhaps, not much inferiour to that which the Reality afforded.---------Having brought herself to make this Confidance, she no sooner parted from his Embraces, than she flew to her fair Friend, gave her the whole History of what had pass’d between them----------repeated every tender Word he spoke-------not the least fond Endearment was forgot----------describ’d his Looks----------his melting Pressures----------his Ardours!----------his Impatiencies! ---------his Extasies!----------his Languishments!31----------endeavour’d to make her sensible how different he was from other Lovers!--how much beyond his Sex!-------with what a God-like Sublimity of Passion he ador’d her!----------and, what was more prodigious than the rest, assur’d her, that each Enjoyment but encreased Desire.32 philecta, who had herself suffer’d much by Love, and the Ingratitude of a Man who had deceiv’d her with Professions of much the same nature with those her Friend seem’d now so certain were sincere, listen’d to her at first only with Compassion, not doubting but that in a very little time she should hear from her as many Expressions of Complaint as now she did of Rapture.----------But Pity wearing off, by being at length brought to believe ’twas needless; a different Passion rose in its stead; she began to

30 General pleasantness of disposition, but in the eighteenth century, also at times used to indicate a distinction from artificial modes of virtue. See Henry Fielding’s “On the Knowledge and Characters of Men,” for example: “Good nature is that benevolent and amiable Temper of Mind, which disposes us to feel the Misfortune, and enjoy the Happiness of others; and consequently, pushes us on to promote the latter and prevent the former; and that without any abstract Contemplation of the Beauty of Virtue, and without the Allurements or Terrors of Religion.” 31 In an interesting doubled meaning, given the physiology of male sexuality depicted in this breathless sentence, languishment can refer to either expressions of longing and desire, or a sense of weariness and loss of vitality. 32 In contrast to the conventional expectation that the libertine or seducer will lose interest in a woman as soon as he has achieved his conquest, The Surprize ends with the narrator’s comment that the virtuous couples live happily after marriage, giving “a proof, that Possession does not always extinguish Desire.”

74

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

envy the Happiness of her Friend----------since her own Deception, she had not believ’d there was such a thing as Constancy33 in Man, would never encourage any Addresses that were offer’d her----------had retir’d herself from Company; and having with a vast deal of Pain, at last, set free her Mind from a Passion which had been so destructive to her Peace, despis’d the Effects she saw of it in others----------But now to hear daily those luscious Descriptions of continued Ardours----------to read his Letters, and to find that still the last was more endearing than the former, gave her, as she imagined, sufficient Reason to complain of the Severity of her own Fate, which permitted her not to have known those Joys which arise from the Proof of reciprocal Affection. She had never seen dorimenus, but was perfectly well acquainted with his Character, and was therefore the more surpris’d that a Man whom all the World talked of as the handsomest, wittiest, and most inconstant of his Sex,34 should now confine himself to one who in her Opinion was far from meriting it from him----------dalinda indeed (would she cry to herself) has Beauty, but there are other Women as agreeable in their Persons, and infinitely more so in their Conversation, that have not met with so grateful a Return.----------I cannot think what he sees in her,-------she has nothing but a Face to recommend her,----------she has no Wit,----------every thing she says is trifling----------all her Notions are poor and insignificant----------and I am certain has not Delicacy enough of Soul to be capable to any degree of that Passion she seems so fond of professing.----------She may like, but ’tis impossible she35 should love. It was not that philecta was naturally addicted to Detraction, or that she had too good an opinion of her own Merits not to think36 favourably of those of another; for excepting the Beauty of her Person, she was in reality every way superior to dalinda, and inferring from that Judgment that dorimenus look’d no farther than the exterior Part, could not believe him a Man of that Nicety she had heard him fam’d for.-------When she reflected on his manner of writing, she was convinced he had an uncommon share of Wit: but then, when she consider’d how little the other was capable of answering his Letters, she knew not how he could reconcile to his good Sense the sending them. 33 Sexual or emotional fidelity. 34 Revised to “of the Sex” beginning in 1725. 35 Altered to “he” in 1725, then back to “she” in 1742 and Dublin editions. 36 Revised to “Merits to think” beginning in 1725, with the exception of Dublin, which reads as here.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 75 

The Arguments she made use of for and against him in her Mind, raised at length a prodigious desire to entertain him: she fancied that if she had an opportunity of talking to him half an hour, she should be able to form a more exact Judgment of his Sentiments,37 and Humour,38 than all she could gather from Description. She told dalinda she had a Curiosity of seeing her Lover, and desir’d she might be admitted to come, as by Accident, to visit her some day when he was with her; but as indifferent an opinion as she had of this Lady’s Understanding, she found it not so easy to prevail on her to grant this Request, as she had imagined: In spite of that Knowledge most Women have of their own Perfection, she doubted their Force in the presence of one who had so many, tho’ of a different Sort from those she was mistress of. If philecta had a less delicate Complection or Features not altogether cast in so fine a Mould, there was something so irresistibly engaging in her Eyes, as well supplied all other wants: besides she had a Shape the most exquisite that could be, and was the Genteelest Woman in the World:----------then for her Conversation, it was such, that there was scarce a Possibility of quitting it without a wish to re-enjoy.----------All these Charms consider’d, the other must have been more weak than she was thought to be, if she had introduced the Person possessed of them to the Man she lov’d, and who she was sensible had so true a taste of Wit: she would not, however, absolutely refuse her, but evaded what she ask’d in as artful and obliging a manner as she could. But philecta easily perceiv’d it was not by her means she should ever have her Curiosity satisfied, and therefore forbore repeating her request, unless sometimes to gratify her Spleen, by putting the other to the pain of inventing Excuses, which she knew she was not very ready at. The Inclination she had before of seeing and speaking to him, now growing stronger by being oppos’d, she resolv’d to accomplish it some way or other; and dalinda, according to custom, still continuing to inform her of all that pass’d between them, one day told her he had made her a Present of a Ticket for the masquerade: A Stratagem came presently in her head, which seem’d to assure her of Success----------She enquir’d in a careless manner, and so as could not be taken to have any design in it, what Hour she was to go, what Habits both were to wear, and whether they went

37 Opinions, but in the eighteenth century the term was also often used in terms of romantic inclination or interest. 38 Character and disposition.

76

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

together from her House, and were39 to meet at the MASQUERADE, or any other Place; and being fully inform’d of every thing she wanted to know, told her she had an Acquaintance who was the most artful Creature in the World in dressing Ladies for that Diversion; and that, if she pleased, she would send her. The other joyfully accepted of the Offer, being willing to appear as amiable as she could in all Dresses in the Eyes of dorimenus. The appointed Day and Hour arriv’d, and philecta fail’d not of sending a Person to assist her in equipping her, as she had promised.----------This was a Creature of her own, whom she recommended, and under the pretence of serving was to delay the time.----------In the mean while, she dressed herself in a Habit, in every thing exactly the same with that which dalinda had told her she was to wear; and being inform’d by her of the direct Hour she had appointed to meet him in, took care to be there early enough.----------She soon distinguish’d the charming Spaniard (for it was in that Disguise that her unthinking Friend told her he was to be) and he as soon found his dalinda (as he thought) in a neat Indian Slave.----------He ran to her, and caught her in his Arms, (the freedom of that Place allowing that Familiarity) which she receiv’d in a manner becoming the Person he took her for, resolving still to act the Part she had begun, ‘till Necessity should oblige her to confess the Counterfeit. His Behavior, and the tender and obliging things he said, made her know dalinda had not boasted of the Power she had over him, without some reason; and that if he did not in reality love her, he so well feign’d the Passion, that a Woman of more Discernment than she was mistress of, might have been deceiv’d by it. But she had not an opportunity of discovering so much of his manner of Conversation as she expected. He took a sudden fancy in his head of going home, and all she could say to prevail on him to the contrary, was ineffectual: he told her he found himself a little disorder’d on the sudden, that he was certain the Noise, Heat, and Confusion of the place they were in, would be far from affording him any Relief, and that he wou’d go with her to her House, and pass the remainder of the Evening there.----------He so little expected a Refusal from her, that he ordered Chairs, and had almost forc’d her into one before she recover’d Presence enough of Mind, to think what she had best do,----------and in the Hurry of the Apprehension of being carry’d to dalinda’s, and all her Contrivance betray’d, pluck’d off her Mask, and let him see his Mistake.

39 Changed to “where” in 1732; returned to “were” in 1742 and Dublin.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 77 

Both stood confounded for some Moments-------He, thro’ surprize for what reason she had no sooner convinc’d him of it, and she, thro’ the Confusion of her Thoughts, what Excuse to make for having done so.----------She, however, was the first who overcame it, and assuming as gay an Air as possible;----------You see, Sir, said she, how impossible it is for you to do any thing in private, not all your Caution to preserve the Honour of dalinda, cou’d prevent a Woman, who suspected your Amour, from detecting you too plainly for a Denial. If ’twere possible, Madam, answered he, for your Curiosity to be as diligent, as your Eyes and Wit are penetrating, I should not wonder if you made discoveries of Secrets infinitely more conceal’d than this:----------But, continued he, (taking her Hand, and kissing it in spite of her Efforts to hinder him) since, whether by Design or Chance, you are in possession of my Secret, in justice to myself, I can do no other than endeavour to be Master of Yours, at least, so far as to know the name of my Confidant, and where I may wait on her to conjure her to preserve it.----------Trust to my Generosity for that, resum’d she, struggling to get from him. On any other Score, I will, retorted he, holding her more fast, but not in this, by Heaven; nor will I give you so just a cause for Ridicule, as the parting from you thus unsatisfied would be.----------Nothing can be more impossible than that she wou’d have been able to have escap’d, without letting him into the whole Affair, if dalinda had not that moment approach’d the Place.----------After all the Delays and artful Impediments with which philecta’s Emissary had kept her from interrupting them, she was at last got there, where the first Person she saw was her dear Don, employ’d in this manner.----------As much taken up as philecta was, she presently perceiv’d her, and forcing one of her Hands from him, was lucky enough to get on her Mask before the other came near enough to discover who she was.----------Look round, cry’d she, and take care you have not a Witness of what you are doing, whose Upbraidings will be more destructive to your Peace, than any Discoveries I shall be able to make.----------She had scarce finished these words, when dalinda coming up to him, and giving him a little Blow on the Shoulder with her Fan, cry’d, ’Tis well, Sir; I find you are of too Active a Disposition to let a Moment pass without its business. The manner in which this was spoke, left him no room to doubt that this last was really dalinda, and in the sudden surprize of being caught at such a Juncture, let go the Hand he had kept Prisoner, and philecta slipt thro’ the Crowd, and got into a Chair without discovery:----------He did not attempt to stay her, for tho’ he would almost have given a Limb to have known who she was, he had more Good-nature and Complaisance for the other, than to make any offer of pursuing her.----------It is not to be doubted,

78

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

but that dalinda ask’d all those Questions which this Adventure render’d excusable; but he was as much to seek for the Meaning of it as she, and only telling her the truth of the Mistake he had been betray’d into by the likeness of their Dress, eas’d her of great part of those jealous Fears she was at first sight of them possest with; and pursuing the Inclination he had of going home with her, they past that Night as they had done many former ones. When philecta was come home, and had the liberty of contemplating on this Affair, she was far from being so well contented with what she had done, as she imagined she shou’d have been.----------Her Curiosity, or at least she yet knew so little of herself, as to imagine, it was that alone which prompted her to take these Measures, was yet unsatisfy’d----------she had seen dorimenus, and had talk’d to him, and was convinc’d that he was a Man of fine Figure and fine Sense; she cou’d not help acknowledging also that the Tenderness with which he accosted her while he took her for dalinda, in part excused the Passion that Lady had for him,----------but still she wanted to know something more, which if she had a second Opportunity of talking to him, she fancy’d she shou’d be able to find out.----------She curs’d the Interruption which had broke off their Conversation, tho’ it was the only means which cou’d have prevented his discovering who she was.-------In fine, she was in Love,----------was charm’d with him to an infinite degree, without being sensible she was so,---and while she languish’d for a second Interview, believ’d the Uneasiness she felt, no more than the effect of a Curiosity ungratified.----------Small was the Repose she took that Night, and to add to the Perturbations of her Mind, dalinda in the Morning came to visit her; told her, she but that Moment was risen from the Arms of her Charmer, and as she us’d to do, related to her all the Passages of his Behavior; among the rest, she told her laughing of the pleasant Mistake he had made in Addressing another Lady for her, and that he cou’d not be persuaded it was any other, ’till she appear’d in reality and undeceiv’d him. What, cry’d philecta, interrupting her, then he did not see her Face? No, answered the other, most certainly he did not, for if he had, he wou’d sooner have been convinc’d of his Error, and neither have given himself the Trouble, nor been so unmannerly to a Stranger, as to have engage’d her in the manner I surpriz’d him.-------You may possibly be deceived, Madam! resumed philecta, a little peevishly, all the World allows him to be a Man of Gallantry,----------and if he had seen the Lady’s Face, perhaps, there might be nothing there disagreeable enough, to make him think it not worth his while to endeavour to engage her.-------Lord! my Dear, reply’d the other, you are strangely cruel to put such things into one’s head,----but I don’t much regard what you say,-------you are a Foe profest to the Sex, and will

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 79 

not believe there is one among them worthy of a Woman’s Affection.------Not for his Constancy indeed, said philecta; and tho’ I do not know dorimenus, I believe he has as little of that Virtue as the rest of his Specie. You wou’d be of another Opinion, answered she, if you had seen his Behaviour last Night,-------I never saw him so Thoughtful, so Chagrin, so Dull; all I cou’d say or do, had not the power to divert him, and this for no other Reason, than because I seemed to suspect the Truth of what he told me concerning the Mistake.-------It would be impossible to describe the Pleasure these words created in philecta’s Soul, she presently imagin’d his Melancholy proceeded from another Cause than that which he pretended, doubted not but he fretted at the hindrance she had been to his commencing an Acquaintance with a Woman who had not seemed unworthy of it, and grew more easy as she thought he grew the contrary.-------They had a great deal more Chat to the same purpose, and many things that dalinda said, philecta took to her advantage, others the reverse. She was altogether unable to form any direct Judgment of his Sentiments, and Curiosity having now a new and more vigorous Incentive than before, she resolv’d to be satisy’d, and try him to the utmost, whatever shou’d be the Consequence.-------In this destructive, and to herself unquiet Disposition, did she pass some days, not knowing what Course to take to compass her Wishes, till the unwary dalinda hapning to tell her she expected him at such a time, put a Stratagem into her Head, which till then she had never thought of:-------She took Pen and Paper, and counterfeiting as near as she cou’d the Character of the happy dalinda, writ to him in this manner. To dorimenus. A Relation40 being come out of the Country with a design to pass some days with me, makes it wholly improper for me to see you at home, but shall be glad to meet you at the appointed Hour, at the House of Mr.------- ---- in St.------ Street; I have a particular Friend lodges there, enquire for philecta, and you will find, Your most Passionate

and Faithful

dalinda.    

40 Family member.

80

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

She had play’d the Counterfeit so well, that ’twas scarce possible for the most discerning Eye to have discovered the difference of the Hand------dorimenus was so entirely deceiv’d by it, and immediately sent an Answer by the Bearer, that he wou’d not fail to be there at the time. Had philecta ask’d herself the Question, when the Hour of his approach drew near, her beating Heart had soon inform’d her it was to something more than Curiosity she ow’d her present Agitations; but not all her good Sense, not all her former Experience of the Passion she was now again possest of, had yet once reminded her, that she took all this Pains for any thing more, than to triumph over the Tenaciousness of dalinda, and to have the pleasure of raillying her a little for her imaginary Security---------or at the most, that it proceeded from a bare liking of his Conversation, and a humour of amusing herself at a time, when she had nothing else to do.-------But as much unacquainted as she was with the true state of her own Wishes, she left nothing undone that she thought wou’d be to the advantage of her appearing well in the eyes of dorimenus,-------her Chambermaid41 and her Glass42 were all the Company she admitted that day,----------a thousand and a thousand times were the Patches43 plac’d, alter’d, and replac’d,---------the Position of the Curls as often chang’d,-------now this, anon that Fashion she thought most becoming,----------sometimes one sort of Glance, then its contrary seem’d the likeliest to attract----------and she remain’d unfix’d in Determination, how she shou’d Look, or Speak, or Act, when she was told he was enquiring for her.----------’Tis probable indeed, that at sight of him, she forgot all the little Arts she had been practising, and receiv’d him with an Air purely Natural; but whatever it was, it had something in it, which, as he afterwards confest, was infinitely more engaging than any thing he had ever seen.----------To find in the Friend and Confidant of dalinda, the Woman whom he had attack’d in so particular a manner at the masquerade, and whom since he had seen he never ceas’d to wish for, as an Acquaintance of a different nature than what he now had reason to hope, gave him a mixture of Surprise, Joy, and Concern: He rejoiced at an opportunity of being in her Company, but was heartily vexed at the

41 Her lady’s maid, who would help with dressing, hairstyling, and other personal tasks. 42 Mirror. 43 In eighteenth-century fashion, a very small piece of black silk, often cut into circle or diamond shapes, stuck to the face to draw attention to a particularly attractive feature (see figure 7). As Olsen documents, the placement of a patch adhered to a system of social signs: a patch near the mouth indicated flirtatiousness, for example, while placement on the right cheek signified that a woman was married (100). See also Sherrow, For Appearance’ Sake.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 81 

occasion, which he expected wou’d not only bring a speedy Interruption, but also take from him the means of ever being able to address her in the manner he desir’d;----------the Confusion of his Thoughts did not however deprive him of the power of making her a great many well-order’d Compliments on this unlook’d-for Happiness, which she return’d in such a fashion as confirm’d him in the opinion he had before conceiv’d of her Wit, and good Breeding.44-------After a pretty deal of Conversation on ordinary Subjects, philecta looking on her Watch, seem’d to express some wonder that dalinda tarry’d so long: The time, said she, in which she appointed to be here, is more than an hour since elaps’d; but I suppose, she is perfectly satisfied of the Strength of her Interest in the Person who waits for her, or she wou’d not run so great a Risque of disobliging him, by leaving him to Conversation, no way capable of entertaining him. Whether this lady had any other design in speaking these words, than to prevent him from any suspicion of the Plot she had laid to bring him there, is uncertain; but they seem’d so fit a handle for him to begin a Discourse, he knew not ’till then to bring about, that he cou’d not let it slip, without having been as stupid, as he was really the reverse. I know not Madam! answered he, (bowing in the most respectful manner) what Excuse she will be able to make to you indeed, for imposing on your Good-Nature this task of Civility to a Man, whom your Judgment must inform you is, for many reasons, strangely unworthy of it.----------For my part, the Blessing I am possess’d of by her means, wou’d be too great, did not the cause, by which it is procur’d, allay it:----------Yes Charming philecta, continu’d he, (after a little pause, and looking on her with the most tender and beseeching Air) I confess my self in this both Ambitious and Ungrateful,----------tho’ to be admitted to gaze on your adorable Eyes!----------to listen to the Wonders of your Wit!----------and to have so near a view of all your Heaven of Beauties, fills my whole Soul with Joy unutterable; yet I am not content,-------O! were I allow’d this privilege by your kindness,----------had I but merits to deserve that favour, or did your good opinion enhance the value of what I am master of, how truly blest were my Condition!----------how cou’d I ever, rapt in immortal Extasys, dwell on this Hand,-------devour it with my eager Kisses, and----------Here philecta, who from the moment she perceiv’d the aim of his Discourse, had been kept from interrupting him only by the Confusion of her Thoughts, now recover’d presence of mind enough to prevent his doing as he said; and snatching away her Hand, Whatever good

44 Good manners and a polite education.

82

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

opinion I had entertain’d of you (cry’d she) such a Behaviour is a way to forfeit it; nor wou’d you treat me in this fashion, had you not the most indifferent one of me.----------But, added she, (abating somewhat of that severity which she had assum’d when she began to speak) the Weakness which is too ordinarily discover’d in my Sex, in part excuses your proceeding.----------I am sensible there are not a few of us who cannot be alone with one of yours, without expecting an Address of the nature you wou’d make to me.---------Nay,-------nay, rejoin’d she, (perceiving he was about to offer something in objection to what she said) I have mention’d the only undeniable reason of your Application,45-------there cannot be another found,-------for I am certain the enamour’d dorimenus is too well vers’d in what will please dalinda, to stand in need of practising his Lesson on any other Woman; or if he did, it wou’d not be her friend philecta he wou’d make his Property.46----------As much Courage as he usually had in these Attacks, as successful as he had ever been, he was almost at a loss how to proceed with this Lady who he found so well furnish’d with Weapons of Defence; and if he had not been inform’d by some tell-tale Cupids in her Eyes, which now and then flew out with tender Messages, that he had a Friend within, might probably have given over both the Hope and the Attempt of Vanquishing. But thus embolden’d, he prosecuted his Design with all the Artifice of tempting Passion-------knelt, sigh’d, begg’d, and swore----------said all that the most burning, raging Love could suggest, or Wit and Eloquence find Words for-------No Interruption happening (for she had ordered to be denied whoever came) Hour after Hour pass’d in this Employment, and not a Moment flew without some new Invention to urge his Passion, and to heighten hers. She was, notwithstanding what she endur’d in the Constraint, so much on her Guard, as not to let fall even a Word that might give him hope. She would not trust her own Power of reasoning, so far as to enter into any Argument with him, but on the score of dalinda; and whenever he conjur’d her to pity what he felt, she reminded him ’twas he ow’d to her who had given him the highest Proofs of Compassion.----------He could say nothing to her, but what she answer’d with the name of dalinda.----------As the Affair was, he had indeed a nice Game to play, and it requir’d all the fine Sense and artful Sophistry47 he was master of, to sollicite Favours from the one, without appearing guilty of an Ingratitude for those he had

45 Request. 46 A prop, used in rehearsing his methods of seduction. 47 Deceptive arguments.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 83 

receiv’d from the other, which might justly render his Suit of no effect; tho’ it is very much to be wonder’d at, that that Passion which had prompted her to take so much pains to engage him, and which while he was pressing her, swell’d in her struggling Heart, and almost crack’d the Strings that held it, did not in spite of her burst out, disclose the God, and show its force above the faint Controul of Reason. But dorimenus was not always to triumph at first sight; he could not find a dalinda in philecta: as she knew better how to love, she also knew better how to govern it; and the Time being arrived, in which, to be consistent with good Manners and Decency, he must be obliged to take leave, all he could obtain from her at parting was, her Permission to wait on48 her again the next day; and that only, as she pretended that she might inform him of dalinda, who she told him she would see in the Morning, and know the Cause which had detain’d her from coming to the Appointment. It must be only a Soul possess’d of the strictest Virtue and most violent Desire, that can form any just Idea of what the poor philecta suffer’d in so exemplary a Self-denial.--------------------Never Woman lov’d with a greater Transcendency of Passion.-------Never Woman was press’d to obey the Dictates of her own Inclinations with more Subtilty and Vigour;----------yet never Woman resisited with a superiour Fortitude.--------------------The Pangs she endur’d, were made more sharp by a Reflection that she owed them to herself, and when she consider’d how easy, how tranquil her Thoughts were before she saw dorimenus; it was with the severest Censure she exclaim’d against that Curiosity which had so far betray’d her.----------She was now no longer insensible by what Passion she had been sway’d to with a second Interview.----------She found she lov’d him with an extravagance of Dotage,----------lov’d him to a degree beyond what she had felt before, even tho’ the breaking it off had very near cost her her Life, and trembled to think what the Consequences might be of this second, and more violent Inclination.----------She was not sure she should always be able to refuse the melting Pressures of this dangerous Charmer.----------She fear’d the Effects of a Desire so wild and ungovernable-------and justly doubted the Force of Reason. What could she do,-------what could she resolve, thus tortur’d, thus torn betwixt the fiercest Opposites;-------yet not even in a Thought transgressing Honour. She at last determin’d never to see him more----------No, said she to

48 Visit.

84

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

herself, all charming as he is, tho’ my Eyes can know no Joy but looking on him, nor my Ears but in Attention to his harmonious Tongue; tho’ every Sense is full of his Perfections, and have no taste for any other Pleasure, they shall no more be trusted with the fatal Transport.----------Virtue, Honour, Religion, Reputation are at stake, and all cry out, No more indulge the ruinous Desire!----------Fly the destructive Graces of the lovely, the too engaging dorimenus-------------------- rather let me die than give a loose to a Passion so pernicious to every thing that ought to be dear or valuable. With this Resolution she gave a strict Charge to her Servant to say she was not at home49----------but she had no sooner spoke the Words, than a Flood of tender Passion rising in her Soul, she was about to countermand this Order.----------She was not half a Minute together in the same mind---------hard she thought it to deny herself so innocent a Satisfaction as the sight of him; but harder yet she found it would be, in his Presence, to contain the Passion she was possess’d of, from breaking out to his Discovery. Reason50 therefore enabling her to consider that the only way to conquer was to fly; and fearing that if she should but hear his Voice, the dearlov’d Sound might have force enough in it to shake the Resolution she had form’d, and that she should be weak enough to call him up, laid hold of the first moment of cool Consideration to put it out of her power to follow the expected Returns of her former Emotions----------She flew out of the House, and came not home ’till late at Night;-------and tho’ there pass’d not one Hour in all that day, in which she was not a thousand times about to come back----------yet she had still Command enough of herself, to suppress the struggling Inclination. In the mean time the agreeable Cause of her Disquiet was far from being in perfect ease himself----------he was prodigiously charm’d with her; and if the Perturbations of his Mind were less terrible than those she endur’d, they were yet more violent than those which Men ordinarily feel on the like occasion. He had continu’d all Night in Agitations, which might very well be accounted the effects of Love; and tho’ he has some reason to hope she look’d not on him with Eyes of Hate or Disdain, yet her Friendship with

49 Not receiving guests (regardless of whether she is physically present in her home). In 1725 and subsequent editions (except Dublin) “Servant” becomes the more impressive “Servants.” 50 The juxtaposition of reason and passion set out here is common in the period, with reason being more often associated with men and irrational passion with women. Conventional norms would expect reason (or virtue, in the more feminized form of rational restraint) to win out after a period of struggle.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 85 

dalinda, and her Knowledge of the Intimacy between him and that Lady, were powerful Objections against him.----------But not being of a Disposition very liable to Despair, and too impatient to endure Suspence, he came prepar’d with all the Arguments his Passion and unfailing Wit could furnish him with, resolv’d to know at once what ’twas he had to expect. To find she was abroad, after having promis’d to admit his Visit, was a Disappointment he was not arm’d against----------and it gave him a greater Shock than it would have done51 any other Man, because he was less accustom’d to meet such Treatment.----------It was the first Mortification of this kind his Vanity had ever receiv’d; and had it been given by another Woman, ’tis probable would have cur’d his Passion.----------But philecta had got fast hold of his Heart, and this little Slight was infinitely too weak to set it free----------Dispirited and altogether unfit for Conversation, he trifled away two or three Hours at a Coffee-House, then went again; but meeting the same Answer as before, grew almost mad. He was now convinced Love had its Pains as well as Pleasures, and was as much surprized to find this Alteration in himself, as he was that there was a Woman in the World on whom he had not been able to make any visible Impression-------After indulging his Spleen the best Part of the day at his own Lodgings, he went again in the Evening to her’s; but she being still abroad, he could not conceal his Discontent.-------He walk’d backward and forward in her Dining-Room, ask’d a thousand impertinent Questions of the Maid, and beginning to believe it an Impossibility to see her that Night, could not leave the place without letting her know some part of the Uneasiness he sustain’d.----------He desir’d Pen and Paper, which being brought him, he writ to her in this manner:

To the Cruel, but most Adorable philecta. NOTHING could have convinced me you were not altogether divine, but the little Disposition I find in you to Mercy: In the Eye of Heaven, to be a zealous Votary is to be a meritorious one;52 and I am certain the

51 Corrected from “would done,” as it is corrected in 1725 and subsequent editions. 52 Devout worshipper. As it is framed here, the votary as devout worshipper of love and the beloved conflates the conventional religious associations of the votary as monk or a nun with the secular language of devotion in the period. Haywood also describes lovers as everlasting votaries in The Fatal Secret and The British Recluse.

86

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

penetrating Eyes of my adored Philecta cannot but have discern’d that Quality in me----------As never any Woman was created to charm like her, so never any Man had a Heart more susceptible of her Power than mine.----------It is with the utmost Resignation---------- ----------the utmost Pleasure I devote my whole Soul to Love and You, and beg no more than your Acceptation of the Offering--------------------Permit me but to see you, and make your own Conditions how far I may obey the Dictates of my Passion in declaring my self The Excellent philecta’s Everlasting Slave, dorimenus.

P.S. I will take the Liberty of waiting on you to-morrow Evening; and since Business, or, which I much fear, some more agreeable Amusement, depriv’d me this day of the Blessing you made me hope, entreat you will have Compassion enough for the Anxieties I feel in this Disappointment, not to make me the most miserable of all created Beings, by a second, which would certainly compleat that Ruin which the first has begun. What became of the Soul-tortur’d philecta, when she came home and read these Lines, let those unhappy Women, who have felt the Force of a Passion as violent as her’s, describe--------------------it is not in my power, any more than it is to represent, as it deserves, the never to be sufficiently admir’d Effect of her Resolution, and firm Adherence to the Rules of Virtue, in an Exigence so dangerous!----------Tho’ overwhelm’d and lost in Love and soft Desire, tho’ at each thought of dorimenus, unusual Warmth ran thrilling thro’ her Veins, her Blood beat high, and she was all o’er Pulse--------------------tho’ her whole Soul dissolv’d in tender Languishments, and for one dear, one blissful Moment she would have forgiven an Age of Life-------Yet fix’d in her Determination, she chose to die, rather than yield to accept the proffer’d Joy. To avoid what most she wish’d, and put it out of her power ever to recede from the Resolution she had form’d of never seeing him any more, she pitched on a Method very extraordinary, and what, perhaps, no Woman before her ever chose.----------She did not doubt but that the same Passion which had inspir’d him to write to her in the manner he had done, would make him neglect no opportunity of being in her Company.----------

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 87 

He had told her in the Postscript of his Letter, that he would come the next day, and she could not answer for herself that she would not see him--------------------but if she should continue to be denied then, or whenever after he should make the same Attempt, yet still there was no defence against his writing; and even if she return’d no Answer to encourage him to pursue his Designs, yet it was keeping alive a consuming Fire in her Breast, which she had hope might be extinguish’d, when there was no longer a Possibility of seeing him or hearing from him. She rose early in the Morning, and having made what haste she could in dressing, surpriz’d dalinda in her Bed.----------I come, Madam, said she, with an Air so wild and troubled, as spoke the Dissatisfaction of her Soul, to relate to you a History which will afford you both Pain and Pleasure; and when you shall hear with how much Barbarity you have been treated by those you most confided in, you will also know you have your Revenge in as exquisite a manner as your most vindictive Thoughts could wish. Here she stopp’d, either unable to utter more for the violent Emotions which just at that time could not but be suitable53 to the Cause, or that she expected what she would reply to words which promised something so unexpected. dalinda, indeed, gave her not much time to pause, and having nothing but dorimenus in her Head, immediately fancied it must be something relating to him which philecta had to reveal: and starting up in her Bed, cry’d, What do you mean, my Dear! have you heard any thing of dorimenus! He is the falsest of all his perjur’d Sex, resum’d the other, hastily; nor am I at all behind him in Treachery and Ingratitude----------But not to add to the Cruelty I have already been guilty of to you, by keeping you in Suspense, know that I love him, love him to Distraction,54 to the extreamest height of furious, raging Passion----------that he has declared himself my everlasting Votary--------------------and that there wants but opportunity for us to be as compleatly wicked as Falshood and the Accomplishment of loose Desire can make us.55 It must be left to the Reader’s Imagination to conceive what ’twas dalinda felt in the sudden Shock of this unlook’d-for Thunderclap----------there are no Words capable of doing Justice to the Horrors, the Perplexities which at that Instant invaded her whole Soul, convuls’d all her Frame, and shook each tender Limb with Tremblings, such as for time depriv’d her of the power of Speech. She, whose Discourse had thrown her 53 Written as “could not be” in 1725, 1732 and Dublin, and again as “could not but be” in 1742. 54 Madness. 55 The only thing separating them from consummation of their desire is opportunity.

88

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

into this Condition, was herself incapable of regarding it, feeling in her own Breast Anxieties at least equal to those she had occasion’d in her’s,56---------and going on with the destructive Story, There, cry’d she, throwing on the Bed the Letter which dorimenus had writ, there, read that, and you will need but little Information how very guilty we have been. The Sight of his well-known Hand, recall’d the fainting Spirits of the unfortunate dalinda----------she read the fatal Scroll, and by degrees coming out of that Astonishment, which had for some moments stunn’d Reflection, and suspended the most raging Passion of the Soul-------Despair, and Jealousy, now show’d themselves in their most proper Colours, and pour’d out Curses numberless on the perfidious dorimenus and philecta, those Undoers of her Peace!-------those Betrayers of her Trust----------with the most bitter Invectives----------the most severe Reproaches Heart e’er conceiv’d, or Tongue e’er utter’d, did she exclaim against the Baseness of them both.--------------------Her guilty Friend heard her with patience, nor interposed one Word in vindication either of herself, or him, whose ruinous Charms had been the Cause of all this Scene of Woe; ’till perceiving her Fury had almost spent itself in railling, she desir’d her Attention57 to what yet remain’d to be told of this tormenting Secret, which the other willingly complying with, she reveal’d every Circumstance of the Affair, beginning from the Measures which her Curiosity had prompted her to take, to see, and entertain the Man whose Character she had heard so much of, and concluding with the fatal Consequence, and her Resolution henceforward ever to avoid him. She had no sooner ended, than dalinda, as doubting the Truth of her last Words, with a Sigh, cry’d out, And can you then, philecta, be so much the mistress of your Inclinations, as to maintain a Resolution so infinitely prejudicial to them.----------Reason, answer’d the other, may certainly enable one to do a great deal; but lest it should not be sufficient of it self for my Protection, I call in the Assistance of a jealous Rival’s watchful Care.----------I will not promise that without your Aid I could for ever deny my self the Joy of looking on him----------Nor wou’d I on any other score have made you the Confidant of my Weakness. But what method, interrupted dalinda, is it in my power to take? The Heart that is once

56 Unclear pronouns reflect the confusion of the moment, but the sentence asserts that Philecta feels anxiety equal to that of Dalinda. Philecta throws Dorimenus’s most recent letter on the bed as evidence of the truth of her account. 57 Turned the focus of her attention.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 89 

estrang’d, requires more Artifice than mine to recover. You have no cause (reassumed philecta) to imagine your Case so desperate.----------I have already told you by what Stratagems, which my Curiosity taught me, I occasion’d these two days absence, he yet believes you wou’d not receive a Visit at your own House-------write to him, therefore, convince him of the contrary,-------and when you see him next, there is no danger but your continued Kindness, and the appearance of my continued Scorn, and the Impossibility he will find it to entertain me, will oblige him to give over a hopeless Prosecution,58 and turn the whole bent of his Desires on her who has so dearly purchased them.59----------Besides, added she, if Fondness fails to engage, I leave his Letter with you, permit you to shew it him, to upbraid him with it, and if he has any spark of Pride or Resentment in him, (of both which I am much mistaken if he has not a considerable Share) he will soon hate the Woman who has expos’d him in the manner I have done to you----------and the Contempt he will have for me, make him avoid my Presence, with as much Care as too much Love and Admiration obliges me to do his. With this Advice and the Assurance, that whatever she suffered in so terrible a Constraint, she never wou’d consent to see him more, philecta left her more at ease than she had been at the beginning of her Discourse, nor was she herself without some secret Satisfaction that she had perform’d the cruel Task she set herself, and been severely just to Virtue----------and in the midst of all those Agonies which arise from struggling Nature unconquer’d, tho’ o’erpower’d, felt a kind of gloomy Transport that she had past the fiery Tryal, and secured her Honour from all the Attacks of Love and her own Wishes.60 philecta was no sooner gone, than dalinda went about to follow the Advice she had given her, and reserving her Reproaches that they might break out with the greater fury when she saw him, employ’d her Pen to dorimenus in this manner: To the most Charming of his Sex, the Accomplish’d dorimenus. ALL Obstacles being now remov’d, I beg to see my Angel this evening about five at my own House, where beside the grand Business of my Life, Love, I have another Affair to communicate concerning the 58 Pursuit of a person or plan. 59 Paid such a high price for them in love and lost virtue. 60 Transport normally means pleasure. This sentence asserts that Philecta manages a desire that she still feels strongly, implying a sense of combined relief and regret.

90

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

occasion of my not meeting the Soul of all my Joys the other day at philecta’s.----------Fail not to come, if you would have me think you yet have that Tenderness you so often have made Profession of, to Your most Passionate and Ever Faithful

dalinda.

This Billet61 was far from being receiv’d with that welcome from which those from her were accustomed to meet.----------He had again been to visit philecta, and was again disappointed in his hope of seeing her; which, together with having no Answer to the Letter he had left for her the Day before, put him in so ill an Humour, that he was entirely unfit for any Conversation, much more62 for an Amorous one. He liked philecta too well, to like any other Woman at all; and the Opinion he had, that it was for the sake of dalinda he had found the other so deaf to his Entreaties, render’d her, of all her Sex, the least capable of pleasing him.----------Altogether indifferent, therefore, how she might take it, he return’d her an answer of Excuse, but in so cold and careless a Stile, that if she had been wholly ignorant of his new Passion, she might easily have perceiv’d something had happened to the ruin of her Hopes. dorimenus,

To the Agreeable dalinda. I Am extreamly sorry that Business of the greatest Consequence makes it impossible for me to see you at the time you mention.----------When I have dispatch’d that, I shall gladly attend you, and renew those Tendernesses, which will be ever a Pleasure to him, who is, Sincerely Yours

dorimenus.

P.S. I fear it will be some days before I can be happy enough to see you.

61 A short letter. 62 The modern form of this expression would be “much less.”

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 91 

’Tis utterly impossible to represent with what affliction she receiv’d so manifest a Proof, that she no longer had a place in the Affection of dorimenus; for tho’ by what she heard from philecta, and the sight of this Letter to her, she was enough convinc’d of his Insincerity and Mutability of Temper, yet she was far from believing she had entirely lost him: but she now cou’d think no other.--------------------She read the vexatious Billet over and over, and cou’d find in it nothing that had the appearance of Love,----------it seem’d scarce Complaisant,63 and the bitter Anguish of her Soul vented itself in Complainings, such as had he been Witness of (possess’d as he was with the most violent Passion for another) he must have pity’d, and perhaps, reliev’d the sad Despair which had occasion’d them. The Tempest of her Grief being a little over, and the Power of Consideration return’d, she began to think what was best for her to do, either to oblige him to a Return of Kindness, or to acknowledge himself as false and as ungrateful as she had sworn to be the contrary. Full of her Wrongs,64 therefore, and impatient to upbraid him, she took his Letter to philecta, and sent it to him under a Cover, in which she writ these Lines: To the Thankless, but Ever-Dear dorimenus. SINCE you have no leisure Moments to throw away on a Woman, whom you no longer love, I send you enclosed65 this Letter, that you may know I am not insensible of the reason of your Absence.----------philecta, I confess, has Charms to create the most violent Passion; but I can never be brought to acknowledge, that all she is possest of, were they infinitely superior to what they are, can be an excuse for Falshood and Ingratitude to another.--------------------I need not tell you with what a Fervency of tender Passion I have lov’d you, my Actions have sufficiently convinc’d you of that Truth; but when I declare, that I do still love you, love you with the same unbated Fondness as before I knew your Crime! I need appeal no farther, than to your own Soul to judge, whether or not I give a Proof of Constancy and forgiving Tenderness, which the World cannot produce frequent Examples of----------By Heaven! you are, even in Falshood, dearer to me than my Life, or than every thing the World calls valuable.---------Return then, thou lovely Ingrate! Thou charming Destroyer of my Peace, 63 Polite. 64 Perceived injustices and unkindnesses against her. 65 Dalinda has enclosed Dorimenus’s own love letter to Philecta, which Philecta gave her as evidence of his unfaithfulness.

92

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

return!----------again make me happy in those transporting Joys, which only you have power to give, and none but those, who love like me, are capable of receiving----------Be but half as ready to Accept a Pardon, as I am to Afford it, and I shall still be blest;----------nor will I ever repeat what’s past, unless to raise our Bliss, by a remembrance and fond regretting of this little Interval.----------Haste to my Arms! my eager, my expecting Arms! and let me there unfold what ’tis I wish, what ’tis I languish for: amidst that Rapture, I can alone unfold how much,-------how passionately,-------how much beyond the reach of Words, I am, My Adored dorimenus’s Most faithfully Devoted dalinda.

P.S. I beg, as tho’ for Life, to see you this Night, I know you are enough Master of your own time to grant me this request, and if refused, shall be certain, that want of Inclination is my only Enemy----------Once more, my Angel, adieu. Let any of that Sex (of which I believe there are but few who have not plurality of Engagements) form to themselves, an Idea of what dorimenus felt in so surprizing a Turn,----------to see his own Letter, containing the most passionate Declaration of Love to one Woman, in the hands of another, whom he had also pretended66 to love, to the same violent degree;----------and at the same time, to find so much forgiving Goodness, where he cou’d have expected only Rage and Resentment,----------to be press’d beyond Denial to come and receive that Pardon, which he was conscious of being far from meriting:----------All this was sufficient to excite in him the utmost extreams of Astonishment, of Gratitude, and of Shame for so unexampl’d a Generosity, and Obligements,67 he neither had it in his power to deserve or to requite;----------but of all the various Agitations he was seiz’d with, there was none gave him half that pain, as the Apprehension, that it cou’d be by no other means than herself, that his Letter to ­philecta 66 Claimed (not necessarily with intent to deceive). 67 Obligement means both an act of kindness or generosity and the obligation that it entails to the recipient.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 93 

had been exposed to dalinda.----------Her refusing to admit his Visits, very much strengthen’d this Opinion. He now began to be assur’d, that all his Attempts on that Lady wou’d be fruitless; and that either to gratify her Sex’s Vanity, and fond to boast her Power, or in obedience to the Rules of a Friendship pretty uncommon, (especially among Women) she had made a Sacrifice of his Pretensions. There was, indeed, nothing unnatural in this Supposition, and he was humbled beyond expression to find he had been so much deceiv’d in the Language of the Eyes, which he was us’d to imagine he had a perfect understanding in, and which had seem’d to tell him, there was something in the Soul of that Lady which pleaded strongly in his behalf.----------But resolv’d to be convinc’d, and not knowing any way to be so, but by going to dalinda, chose, rather to endure all the just Reproaches he must expect, from a Woman treated in the manner he had done her, than endure one Hour an Uncertainty so perplexing.---------He, therefore, after the Messenger had waited a long time the Result of his Determination,68 ordered him to let the Lady, who sent him, know, he wou’d without fail wait on her at the time she desir’d. At length, the so much wish’d for Hour by both (tho’ for different Reasons) was arriv’d, and the over-joy’d dalinda receiving him in a manner which savour’d neither of Jealousy nor Indignation, oblig’d him to return the Caresses she gave him, with a seeming Equality of Tenderness.---------She kept the Promise she had made him, and forbore any Upbraidings; if she mentioned philecta at all, it was in such a manner as he could not tax her with ill Humour, and had she been as cautious for her own Interest, as she was to offend him, she might perhaps have been happy in his renew’d Endearments; but on his mentioning that Lady, and speaking some few half Sentences, which he thought might excite her Curiosity, eas’d his own, by being inform’d of the whole Affair.----------The poor unthinking Openhearted Fair, believing him now all her own, had no reserve, related to him in every Particular of her Conversation with philecta, and let him know, that that Lady had not disclos’d this Secret to her out of Contempt or Dislike of him, who had address’d her, but out of too great a Tenderness and a violent Affection.--------------------What could be more transporting to the Soul of dorimenus than such a Discovery? What cou’d be more prejudicial to her, who made it?-------All the Charms of philecta now rise to his Idea, with greater force than ever----------he could not help loving her, for the force of her

68 Letters among the upper ranks were typically delivered by servants, who might be ordered to wait for a response before returning.

94

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

Passion for him; but he perfectly ador’d her, for the strength of a Resolution so uncommon----------he found Charms in her refusals, which not the utmost Condescensions of any other Woman cou’d afford.-------He thought the Conquest of a Heart like hers, worthy the utmost assiduity; and since he was assur’d he had a Friend so powerful as Inclination, to plead on his behalf, was resolv’d never to give over till he had vanquish’d all Opposers.----------He grew prodigiously thoughtful, after she had made an end of the Narrative, nor was it in her power to stay him.---------- He long’d to be alone, to indulge Contemplation.----He languish’d to be happy in Idea, with the now more than ever adorable philecta, and to invert some means, by which he might overcome her scrupulous Virtue, and become in reality as blest, as love confess’d and rewarded wou’d make him. He profess’d however as much as was necessary, to make dalinda believe he had no Wishes but what were center’d in the Possession of her, and thinking it no Sin to throw in two or three Oaths to confirm her belief, took his leave, with a Promise to return the next day. She, perfectly satisfy’d with what he said, suffer’d him to go without feeling any ominous Emotions.69 I will not trouble my Reader with any repetition of what his Thoughts were that Night, ’tis easy to believe they were not fill’d with very violent Perturbations.70----------He was perfectly convinc’d, that the Woman, who of all the World he believed most worthy his Esteem, lov’d him with a Passion, which he cou’d not have hoped; and as he knew there was nothing wanting but his Presence, to banish all the Guards which Virtue raised in opposition to his Desires,-------he resolv’d, some way or other, to get to the Speech of her. The Morning no sooner broke than he arose, and dressing himself, went once more to the House where philecta lodg’d-------designing to beg Permission for a moment’s Conversation; but Love, and Fortune befriending him on this occasion, he found the Door open, and eager to Access, stay’d not71 till any body should come to answer his Demand, but 69 This entire paragraph, beginning “At length …” appears only in the 1724 and Dublin editions; it is absent from the versions published in the Secret Histories between 1725 and 1742. Interestingly, while the paragraph is not included, the preceding paragraph ends the page in the 1725, 1732, and 1742 editions (“… desir’d”), and the catchword (at the bottom of the page, indicating the first word on the next page) differs among these three editions; in the 1725 edition, the catchword "At" suggests incorrectly that the next page will include the paragraph of the 1724 edition. The 1732 and 1742 editions catchword is “I WILL,” and so does not point to the deleted paragraph. 70 Upsets or disturbances. 71 Did not wait.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 95 

walking gently in, and going up Stairs with the same Precaution, got to the Apartment of the Charmer, without being observ’d.----------The Door was only shut to; and in his attempting to knock, it flew open, and admitted the impatient Lover.----------He made no scruple of running immediately to the Chamber.--------------------She was not yet risen, and had but that moment waked from a most pleasing Dream, of which he was the Subject: Imagination, always a Friend to Love, had given her, in Sleep, a full Idea of those Joys, which, when Awake, she durst not allow herself to think of. The rapturous Image left an unusual Languishment in her Eyes, they had nothing of their wonted72 Austerity remaining, and seem’d rather to invite than forbid the adventurous Gazer, who, in spite of his natural Boldness, was a little dash’d at his first Entrance.----------He was two or three moments in the Room before she saw or heard him, but the agreeable Posture in which she lay, and which disclos’d to him Beauties, which her Dress had conceal’d, gave him Agitations too violent to permit him to continue long at the distance he then was;----------he made but one step to the Bed-side, and throwing himself on his knees, by that beseeching Posture endeavour’d to assure her he came not on any dishonourable Design.----------She gave a little shriek at first sight of him, but not happening to be heard by any in the House, no interruption ensu’d, and he had all the Opportunity he cou’d wish, to persuade her she had no cause to fear his presence.----------Her Soul was at this unguarded hour, too much dissolv’d,73 to permit her to assume any part of that Severity with which she had treated him, when last he entertain’d her:-------Yet, trembling, for the Consequence of this Visit, she intreated him to withdraw into the next Room, assuring him she wou’d there listen to all he had to say.-------But he too well understood the Advantage he was possess’d of, to let it slip; and instead of retiring, drew by degrees nearer, and nearer, to the tempting Scene, till he was too close to be repuls’d without having taken some part of the Satisfaction his Passion required: ----------She cou’d not hinder him from kissing and embracing her,----------from feasting his impatient Eyes with every naked Charm about her,----------from roving o’er them with his glowing Hands, with all the unlimited Freedom of luxurious Fondness, and at last, amidst Delight and Pain, a Rack of Extacy on both sides, she more faintly denying, he more vigorously pressing, half yielding, half reluctant, she was wholly lost,-------all her boasted

72 Usual. 73 She is disordered by her sudden waking from a dream, in which she has embraced the joys that she will not allow herself to consider when fully awake.

96

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

Reason,-------all her forceful Resolution,-------all the Precautions of so many days, in one tumultuous Moment were o’ercome,-------Love triumph’d over all, and revel’d in the Spoils of Honour.-------The difficulty with which dorimenus had gain’d this Conquest, enhanc’d the Value; and the Restraint which philecta had put on her Inclinations, made her now give a greater loose to them: which puts me in mind of what a late celebrated Author says on the like occasion; She that so fiercely can resist Desire, With double Rage will love, when Raptures fire.74

And ’tis certain, when once a Woman of Virtue falls a Victim to Love, she is by as many degrees more vigorous in the Gratification of her Passion, as she was in her Efforts to Overcome it. The Transport over, the Conquest fully secured, the happy Lover was now easily persuaded to go into the next Room, and the yet Unrepenting Fair rung her Bell for her Maid, to assist her in getting out of Bed.75----------They past the remainder of that day together, and in the Intervals of their Endearments, beguil’d the Hours in Discourses on the various Turns, which had happen’d in the short time of their Acquaintance, and by what strange and extraordinary means each had arriv’d at the Point they now were at. For about a Week, never any two People more indulg’d themselves in guilty Pleasures----------they scarce were ever asunder in that time; dorimenus cou’d not live without philecta, nor philecta without dorimenus; both abandon’d all other Conversation, and found nothing Agreeable, nothing Charming, but in each other: He thought all he cou’d do too little to merit the Favour of a Woman qualified like her, and she imagin’d she cou’d never enough requite a Constancy and Gratitude so

74 From the 1706 play The British Enchanters: or, No Magick like Love by George Granville, Baron Lansdowne. Arcalaus, an Enchanter, speaks these lines to the innocent Oriana in a rage at her rejection of his romantic and coercive sexual pursuit. Arcalaus is about to attempt to rape Oriana, and outlines his motivation with the assertion that “when [love] fails, a sure Reserve is Force” (4.1. 92). Dorimenus draws on Arcalaus’s sense that a woman’s resistance creates greater pleasure for both once the conquest is attained. The 1706 London printing of the play lists the lines as       “Who with such courage can resist desire, With what a rage she’ll love when raptures fire” (IV.i. 105–6). 75 This would entail helping with washing and dressing, arranging hair, and applying makeup.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 97 

uncommon,--------------------each made it their whole Study to oblige the other, and there wanted but a Certainty of its being permanent, to render their Condition a kind of Heaven on Earth. But all this while, what were the Anxieties of poor dalinda, what did she not sustain, rack’d with a fruitless Expectation,-------tortur’d with the worst Furys of the Soul, Suspence and Jealousy;--------------------and notwithstanding all her endeavours, altogether unable to find out the cause of this Disappointment of her so lately elevated Hopes, in vain she writ, in vain she sent to dorimenus. He had neither the least remains of Inclination to visit her, nor time to make Excuses for his absence,--------------------his whole Soul and all his Moments were elsewhere devoted,-------he was now all philecta’s, as much as a Man of his Temper cou’d be,----------and the forsaken Lady felt, in the Impossibility of finding out the Reason of his Change of Behaviour, Disquietudes almost equal to the Loss of him occasion’d.----------The manner in which philecta had discover’d the Declaration he had made her, and the Tenderness she cou’d not avoid feeling for him, made her far from suspecting what had hap’ned between them afterward; nor would she ever have had it in her thoughts, that it was for her sake she was treated in this manner, if an Accident had not call’d her to visit, on some Business, a Relation, who liv’d on the other side of the Thames.76 The House she was at, was the very next to one eminent for the Pleasure of its Situation,77 and fine Gardens; by a chance, unlucky to the Peace of those she spy’d, she look’d out of a Window, which had the command of part of the Walks,78 and saw her ungrateful dorimenus, and, what amaz’d her more, philecta with him.----------The sudden Rage which invaded her at so unexpected, and so shocking a Discovery, left no room for Discretion to interpose: She flew immediately out of the House she then was in, and into the Garden where they still continued, with only a little alteration of Posture; for as before she had only barely seen they were together, without any other Reason to believe them guilty, than that they were in a place so remote from any other Company; she now found them in an Arbour, he lying carelesly down on a Carpet spread on the Floor, with his Head on her Lap, as she was sitting by him, she had one of her Hands fast grasped in his, and with the other she seem’d to toy, and stroke his Face and 76 The south bank of the Thames was in the eighteenth century less urban and congested than the city of London on the north bank. Across from Westminster were Lambeth, home of the Bishop of Canterbury's palace, and Southwark. 77 Location and surroundings. 78 A view of some of the designated walking paths in the gardens.

98

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

Breast.--------------------’Tis hard to say, whether Amazement or Indignation had the greatest share in her Breast, but ’tis easy to believe the Violence of both left no room for Consideration,----------the Lovers lost in the pleasing Contemplation of each other’s Charms, nor saw, nor heard her, till running to the place where they were, and catching hold of philecta, ----------’Tis well, Madam! she cry’d, is this your boasted Virtue?----------Your Reserve?----------False, False Woman!----------And you, (continued she, turning to dorimenus) Ungrateful, and most perjur’d of all your deceiving Sex, what Excuse can’st thou now make,----------by what Artifices,79 by what Insinuations can’st thou again betray my easy Nature?80----------Thou cool Designer!81 What can thy subtil-working Wit invent, to clear thy Honour or philecta’s Innocence?--------------------You both are known, detected, and be assured the Affair shall be no Secret,----------I will at least have the satisfaction of Revenge.--------------------She had railed on, if dorimenus, who by this time had recovered himself from the Surprize of her first Appearance, had not put a little stop to the career of her Tongue by these words:----------Well, Madam, (said he to her in an angry Accent) what you suspect, you may, if you please divulge, but I wou’d have you consider well before you talk too much-------remember that dalinda can suspect nothing of philecta, but what philecta is certain of dalinda.------I would have you, therefore, be tender of this Lady’s Honour, as you wou’d preserve your own.----------As for my own part,82 I will at any other time reply to your Upbraidings, but at present, you appear too warm for Argument.----------He said no more, but taking philecta, who was almost dead with shame, by the Hand, and leading her with all possible speed to the Water-side, where a Boat waited for them, left the forsaken Fair to utter her Complainings to the unregarding Winds. She was as good as her word however,-------the Adventure thro’ her means became the Chat of the whole Town, and philecta suffered a great deal from the Admonitions of her Relations and Friends--------------------all who had any concern for her Reputation, advised her to break off her Acquaintance with him, but that was a task not so easy to be accomplish’d as they imagin’d--------------------she cou’d sooner have forgone her Life than his Conversation, and ’tis impossible for any thing to be more exposed than the Affair between them. 79 Strategems or tricks. 80 Deceive my openness of nature. 81 Detached schemer. 82 Changed to “As for me” in 1725 and subsequent, except for Dublin, as here.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity

 99 

But this was not the worst part of her Misfortune; an unexpected Occasion hap’ned to call him into the Country soon after, and tho’ he took leave of her with all the tender Protestations imaginable, an Overture of Marriage being there made him with a very agreeable Lady, ’tis thought he will easily be brought to accept it.83----------philecta has heard the News, and to increase her Misfortune, finds herself with Child----------the Agonies she now sustains in a too late Repentance, are not to be describ’d. Undone in all which ought to be valuable, she curses the undoing Transport she so lately blest,----------and is sufficiently convinc’d how infinitely to blame she was, in indulging a Curiosity which proved so fatal to her Virtue, her Reputation, and her Peace of Mind; and which, ’tis highly probable, will in a short time be found so to her Life.

F I N I S.

83 The passive voice in this sentence may communicate a distinction between Dorimenus’s previous relationships based upon passionate desire and the implications of a property marriage based on financial interest rather than personal affection. Property marriage was still common among English gentry in the early eighteenth century.

100

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

Title page of 1725 first edition

THE MASQUERADERS; OR FATAL CURIOSITY: BEING The Secret History of a Late AMOUR.

____________________________________________ PART II.

____________________________________________ What guards the Purity of melting Maids, In Courtly Balls, and mid-night Masquerades; Safe from the treacherous Friend and daring Spark, The Glance by Day, and Whisper in the Dark: When kind Occasion prompts their warm Desires, When Musick softens, and when Dancing fires! POPE.84

____________________________________________

LONDON: Printed for J. ROBERTS, near the OxfordArms in Warwick-Lane. M.DCC. XXV.85

84 In the opening canto of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, Belinda’s guardian Sylph lists the dangers from which the Sylphs, “wise celestials,” protect the “fair and chaste” though “men below” mistake mystical protection for “honour” (I. 67–78). 85 Copytext is AB.12.7a (1725). A second edition is listed, but it appears to be a reissue of this one, and is identical.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

 101 

TO Lady L. PRICE.86 MADAM, IF Authors were posses’d of any part of that Sense of Justice, and true Honour, with which they adorn the Heroes and Heroines of Story, they wou’d certainly have a greater Eye to Merit than the World’s Precedence; and looking down on Titles, think themselves honour’d only when happy in the Patronage of real Worth. BUT when the Charms of Beauty, Wisdom, Learning, Goodness, and all the Perfections which embellish Humanity, and render the Owner valuable to the World, are illustrated, and made more Conspicuous than in a mean Station they could possibly be, how bless’d must be the Performance so protected!----------with what an infinity of Envy will these few Pages be regarded!----------and with what a sensible Regret will the less Fortunate consider the Happiness I enjoy, in the Confidance of your Ladyship’s Pardon, for the presumption of this Address. I HAVE felt a Pleasure which is impossible to be described, whenever Reflection has indulg’d itself in Contemplation on those prodigious and amazing Excellencies your Ladyship possesses in so eminent a Degree, not only above the feeble Pretences of our own Sex, but those also of that to which the prevalence of Custom has allow’d Millions of Advantages, denied to us. It should, me-thinks, make that Lordly and Self-sufficient part of the Creation87 blush to see so evident a Proof, that it is only to

86 Likely Lady Lucy Rodd Price, a Herefordshire heiress born Lucy Rodd, who later married lawyer and Tory loyalist Robert Price. She subscribed to Haywood’s Letters from a Lady of Quality, and King’s political biography of Haywood lists her among the “people from theatrical circles” who comprised the “surprisingly distinguished subscription list of [William Hatchett’s 1729] Morals of Princes” (59). Haywood had a long relationship with Hatchett and also subscribed to the publication. This Lucy Price was also, like Haywood, associated with Richard Savage, and she is mentioned in accounts by the publisher William Chetwood, who travelled in the same circles as Haywood and Savage before the mid-1720s. The Prices had divorced upon his claim of criminal conversation and adultery in 1690. Lucy then took up residence at Gray’s Inn and became known as a Petticoat Counsellor, drawing up contracts and wills in clear violation of contemporary rules of the legal profession.The Mrs Lucy Price to whom Edmund Curll’s The Memoirs of Matthew Tyndall LLD was dedicated seems likely to be the same woman. On Lucy Price, Tyndall, and Curll, see Baines and Rogers, Curll 233–5. 87 Men.

102

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

those unjust Restrictions they are indebted for their boasted Superiority of Wisdom and extended Knowledge; and that the Souls of Women are so far from being less capable of Improvement, that, with but a few of those innumerable Opportunities which they enjoy, they can so far surpass them in every Perfection. WHAT Acknowledgements then, Madam, are your due from the Female World?----------Can you be ever too much lov’d!----------too much rever’d!----------or too much prais’d!----------I never so much lament my own Inability, as when I aim to do Justice to exalted Merit: had I the power of expressing the Sentiments I am inspir’d with, it would be in a vastly different Manner, from what I now do: I should testify both my Sense of the many Obligations I have to you, and that extreme Admiration and Respect which is owing to you from the whole World, and has ever been most faithfully paid you by, MADAM, Your Ladyship’s

most Faithful, and most Obedient Servant.

The Masqueraders: or, Fatal Curiosity. ____________________________________________________ PART II. ____________________________________________________ THERE was no occasion for the Friends of dorimenus to be over-sollicitous for the hastning of his Marriage with the Lady they had recommended to his Choice; lysimena had Wit and Beauty sufficient to have captivated a Heart infinitely more reluctant to the Calls of Love than was his. Nor was her Fortune less agreeable to his Circumstances, than her Person was to his Inclinations.----------His Town-Amours were now no more remember’d or thought on, but with Contempt; his whole Soul was for the present devoted only to her, and while the old People on both sides were employed in agreeing on Jointure and Settlement,88 he made use of all those Arts he was so perfectly skill’d in, to inspire her with a Passion equal to that he was possess’d of.-------The God of soft Desires, ever propitious to the Wishes of this Lovely Inconstant, rendered her no less susceptible of his Power, than dalinda, philecta, and a Number of other unhappy Victims had been.--------------------Both burning with an equal Impatience for the happy Day which was to give them to each other, it was soon appointed, and the much desired Nuptials solemnized with as much Magnificence as the Country would permit.89 THE mutual Ardor of these, as yet happy Lovers, being in Enjoyment gratify’d, both their Breasts found room for other Desires than those which Love inspires. Pomp, Show, and Grandeur, now had Charms to make them wish to quit that Retirement they were in, and repair where

88 Legal agreements typically arranged before a marriage, establishing which parts of a family’s wealth and property would belong to or be used to support the wife after the death of her husband. 89 The country always being assumed less fashionable than the city.

104

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

the Felicity they enjoy’d might be publick.-------Orders, therefore, were immediately sent to London, for the bespeaking a fine gilt Coach,90 new Liverys,91 and every thing necessary to make their Equipage92 appear the Envy of the Ring, as their Persons were of the Circle: and they no sooner received the News that every thing was ready, than they took leave of their country Friends, with a Satisfaction which made the thinking part of them perceive the Passion which each had profess’d for the other, was not of so Romantick a nature, as that the Completion of it was sufficient to compensate for the want of all other Pleasures in Life. lysimena had not been in Town since she had arrived at those Years which could make her capable of enjoying those Amusements the Young and Gay are so much taken up with.------Childish Pleasures, and such as any other Place might have as well afforded, had been all her Experience could inform her were the Delights of London;93 but she had heard so much from those of her Acquaintance, who constantly visited that darling Scene of Vanity every Year, and from dorimenus himself, of the Magnificence of the Inhabitants, the prodigious Round of various and unintermitting Pleasures prepared for those who had Fortunes to enable them to purchase them; that she long’d to be one of those happy People, and could not help, at her Departure, looking down with a kind of Pity on those she left behind, who she thought but lingred out their days in a Stupidity and unactive Dulness, which she bless’d her good Stars to be delivered from.----------The innocent Delights of a rural Life, and that Peace of Mind, which is the Consequence of being unacquainted with the World, she despised, as no way essential to Happiness.--------------------These new, these so much talk’d-of, these untasted Joys, were all she languish’d to possess; and without which, even dorimenus, dear as he was to her, would not have had power to content her Wishes. VAST as was the Idea she had form’d to herself of the Place she was going to, she found it, at her Arrival, infinitely more to her Satisfaction than all Imagination could suggest.----------Had her Charms been of a less distinguishable Kind, all who are in the least acquainted with the Taste of the present Age, need not be told what a prodigious Eclat94 the Name of

90 Corrected from “Goach.” 91 Distinctive (and often elaborate) uniform worn by the servants of a privileged household. 92 A carriage and horses, as well as the liveried servants who attend the carriage. 93 This paragraph contrasts the worldly delights of London such as the theatre and masquerades, with the innocent delights of the country, using language of safe and peaceful dullness for the country and of dangerous appetite and desire for the city. 94 Sensation.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

 105 

a new Beauty makes; but as she is really one of the most lovely Women in the World, it is not to be wondered at, that she should immediately attract a great Number of Admirers. Her first Appearance at Court, established her a celebrated Toast;95 and every body knows, that a Character, given by a few, who are esteemed Judges, is in a very little time universal. It is reckoned unfashionable to be of a different opinion. The Million give not themselves the trouble of examining into the Merits of the Cause; it is sufficient such a one and such a one believes it, or seems to do so, to oblige them to swear it.----------So greatly is it in the power of a few leading Men to sway the Minds of the unthinking Multitude, in Affairs of infinitely more Consequence than the Beauty of this Lady!----------But to return to my purpose: Not an Hour in the Day pass’d, without affording some Food to her Vanity: whenever she appeared, all Eyes were fixed on her, as if no other Object was worth their notice.----------Whether she graced the Mall, the Ring or Play-house,96 a thousand Mouths were open; and sometimes the Exclamations of their pleased Amazement were loud enough to reach her Ears, when one would cry to his Companion-------See there!------behold the lovely Bride of happy dorimenus!-------and another at the same time,-------Oh! she’s exquisitely handsome! In fine, all that can be conceived of Admiration was paid to her, and she became so much accustom’d to Gallantry, and to the Conversation of the Beau-Monde,97 that great part of the Admiration she had conceived of her Husband was abated, and by little and little, those Graces, which at her first acquaintance with him had so much charm’d her, lost all their relish, and she found nothing to distinguish him above those other Gentlemen who made it their Study to please her. AS for dorimenus, the natural Inconstancy of his Temper return’d, as soon as he had opportunities to renew those dear Delights which Variety affords. He could not find himself again in a Place where every day there is some fresh Sun of Beauty breaks out to tempt the adventurous Gazer, without feeling the same Desires he had done, before he had enter’d into a

95 “A celebrated woman whose health is often drunk” (Johnson’s Dictionary). Being named in toasts by groups of men was a marker of renowned beauty, but could also be seen to convey some disrespect to a virtuous woman, as in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, when Sophia is furious to learn that Tom has toasted her in public. 96 The Mall is a part of St James’s Park in London, where affluent people gathered to walk and gossip; the Ring is a similarly fashionable circle route around Hyde Park where horses and coaches could also be shown off. Along with the theatre, these were among the most fashionable places to see and be seen in the early eighteenth century. 97 Fashionable society.

106

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

state which forbids Plurality of Engagements; and as it had never been his Custom to languish much for any Woman after Enjoyment, so he continued in the same humour, and lysimena appeared no longer, in his Eyes, the Wonder of her Sex.--------------------The Indifference both began to feel for each other, and the separate Amusements each were entering into, hindered either from taking much notice of the other’s Deportment; and tho’ there was the greatest Alteration in their Behaviour, as well as other Sentiments, the Consequence was neither Jealousy, nor Despair: all that Violence of Passion,----------those Hopes, and Fears, and Anxieties before Possession, and that Extasy, and unbounded Rapture, which neither of them endeavoured to disguise afterward, was now sunk into a cold Civility and distant Complaisance; which, while it surpriz’d those about them, was scarce perceptible to themselves. But tho’ he was very much fallen off from his Passion for his Wife, and had now sufficient room in his Heart for other Attractions, it was neither those of the unhappy philecta, nor of any of that Number who had already been undone by the too great Persuasion of his Charms, which could find the way to re-instate themselves: He was of that opinion which Mr. Dryden has made Morat, in his excellent Play of Aureng-Zebe; To Love once past, I cannot backward move, Call Yesterday again, and I may love.98

IT was only new and untasted Pleasures which this enchanting Rover99 was in chase of.----------He had seen a Lady at the Opera, whom he was infinitely charm’d with; and the pains he was at, to make her sensible of his Passion, was more than one would think it possible for a Man to take, who had it so little in his Nature to be constant: but she, who was of the most Coquette Disposition100 in the World, had as great a Satisfac  98 In John Dryden’s verse tragedy Aureng-Zebe, the would-be usurper Morat undergoes a fifth-act conversion to give up his ambition; he declines, however, to return to his virtuous wife Melesinda and tells Indamora, the new object of his desire, that he cannot go backward in love (V.i. 124–5). Guided by his newly found virtuous love of Indamora, Morat asks forgiveness of the “abandon’d wife” Melesinda, and dies after saving the life of Indamora. Melesinda ends the play planning to die happily on her husband’s funeral pyre.   99 A romantically inconstant man. Possibly also an allusion to Aphra Behn’s 1677 play The Rover, a dark comedy in which the rakish Englishman Willmore pursues two women in Naples during Carnival. 100 Flirtatious and outgoing: “a gay, airy girl … who endeavours to attract notice” (Johnson’s Dictionary).

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

 107 

tion in finding herself addressed, as he had in subduing; and having had before some Experience of Mankind, and was besides perfectly acquainted with the Character of dorimenus, knew that to bless her Slave, was not the way to maintain her Conquest, kept him still in suspence, always hoping, but never obtaining. Such a Behaviour, instead of cooling, raised his Ardors to a degree beyond what is ordinarily felt in that Passion: he would have given almost his Life, to have had the same Power over this Charmer, as he had had over a thousand others, who had yielded to his Wishes without half the Assiduity he had paid to her. winter being come on, and Mr. heydegger101 renewing the Diversion of the Masquerade, the enamour’d dorimenus made a Present of a Ticket to his admired briscilla, for that was the Name by which the now reigning Mistress of his Affections was distinguished: in recompence of which Favour, he obliged her to tell him the Habit she would wear.---------He had so much experienced the Power which Musick, Wine, Dancing, and those other Temptations which fill up that promiscuous Scene of Pleasures, had to soften the Heart, and render it incapable of resisting the Invasions of amorous Desires; that he doubted not but he should find Advantages here, which in spite of all the Endeavours he had made use of, had been hitherto vain.----------She assured him she would appear in the Vestments of a Nun,102 and he, in conformity to her, would needs go as a Fryar:-------both promised themselves Diversion; tho’ each had a various View in this Assignation. lysimena in the mean time was not idle in preparing herself for this celebrated Diversion; and tho’ her Husband did not give himself the trouble of procuring her a Ticket, she was not without those, who thought her accepting one a Favour: she had also a very handsome Dress provided, which was that of a Country Maid. But as dorimenus had not been complaisant enough to invite her to go, she did not acquaint him with her Intentions to do so. AT length the Night of Rendevouz arrived, so much desired by both Husband and Wife; the former flattering himself with the Idea of obtaining from briscilla all his Soul could wish, and the other full of ten

101 John James Heidegger (1666–1749) convened and promoted public masquerade balls at the Haymarket Theatre in London in the first part of the eighteenth century. See page 22. 102 See figure 7 for an image from slightly later in the century of a woman in masquerade costume as a nun.

108

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

thousand pleasing Expectations of something very delightful, in a Diversion so new and unknown to her. ’TIS probable neither made a Secret of their Intentions of going to the Masquerade, but they were now grown too fashionable a Couple, to desire each other’s Company, but at times when there was no other to be had; neither did they give themselves the trouble of asking what Habits they would wear, it being the least of their Designs to engage, or be known by each other, in a Place where each hoped to be much better diverted.---------dorimenus dined not at home that day, and dress’d himself as he commonly did, at a House adjoining to the Theatre.----------Something happening to be amiss in the Dress which lysimena had designed to wear, she sent for several Masquerade Habits, to take her choice which she would put on; and by a whimsical Effect of Chance, she happened to pitch on that of a Nun. briscilla, who retained her old humour of Coquetting, and guessing at the Hopes with which dorimenus flattered himself by this Interview, resolved to disappoint him; and instead of appearing in the Habit she had made him believe, put on the Resemblance of a Gipsy------having a Mask of a Tawny Colour, a brown Jacket, a short red Petticoat and Mantle, and in this Equipage, leaning on a Stick, and counterfeiting a Trembling, as tho’ thro’ Age and Weakness, she entered the Assembly; where, almost, the first Person she cast her Eyes on, was the amorous Fryar, busily engaged among a Crowd of Ladies.----------She immediately join’d them, and with a shaking, broken Voice, suitable to the Figure she made, Who will have their Fortunes told? (said she.) None was so ready to give her his Hand as dorimenus; which, as soon as she had looked into, My Art, (resumed she) assures me that you will have a very great Disappointment this Night.-------I know you come hither only to make work for a Confession, but the Sinner you expect, dare not be frail, because there is no Dependance on your Absolution.103 You may be mistaken, my little Gipsy, (answer’d he) and I fancy if you and I were alone together, I should make you have a better opinion of me.-------I don’t believe that, (cry’d she) for I have a notion that I see the best of you at present.------They had a good deal more of this sort of Raillery,104 which might perhaps, at last, have discovered who she was, if their Conversation had not been interrupted by the appearance of a genteel fine-shap’d Nun, who, that moment, entered the Room.----------Our Fryar, who had with impatience 103 Though she declines to dress as a nun, Briscilla uses religious language of sin, confession, and absolution as she speaks in the guise of a fortune-telling gypsy. 104 Banter, often witty or satirical.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

 109 

watched for the Sight of that Habit, left the Gipsy, somewhat abruptly, to accost the Person who he thought the same he came thither to meet.---------He said some words to her, which obliged her to make Answers such as soon gave him to understand the Dress had deceived him, and that this was some other Nun; but imagining she might be of the same Order,105 and being well enough pleased also with her Wit and Spirit, resolved not to leave her; at least, till he should find the other.----------He mingled so much Tenderness with his Gallantry in the Addresses he made her, that if he were very much taken with her, she was ravish’d with him.-------As much in Love as dorimenus imagined himself to be with briscilla, after having several times vainly thrown his Eyes round the Company, in search of her, he found a good deal of Consolation in the hope, that since she had fail’d in her Promise of meeting him, he should not be wholly disappointed.-------------The Night wearing away apace, and perceiving nothing that he could take to be her, he began to make serious Declarations of Love, and in the most pressing manner imaginable, to the fair Nun: but as they were sitting together in a Corner, the most remote from the Company that they could find, the Gipsy, who, after parting with him, had been more smart,106 in her Repartees, than Discretion would permit; had engaged herself so far with a Gentleman, that she could not get free from him; came running to the place where107 they were, and catching fast hold of the Fryar----------I beseech your Reverence, (said she) to take me into your charge; it is the duty of your Function to assist the Distress’d.108 dorimenus was a Man of too much Gallantry not to afford his Protection to a Lady, and starting up, cry’d, Yes; and you shall find the Gown not inferior, in Points of Honour, to the Sword:----------But, for what cause is my Assistance requisite?----------He spoke these last words with such an Air of Gravity, that the Gentleman who had her in chace, presently believed she was of his Acquaintance, or perhaps some Relation, so that he begg’d Pardon, said he would insist no farther on seeing her Face, (which, it seems, had been the quarrel) and withdrew.----------briscilla was however, for all her Gaiety, truly frighted

105 The particular religious society to which a nun belongs; here, suggesting a woman of similar sexual availability. 106 Clever, but also impudent or disrespectful. 107 Corrected from “were.” 108 Briscilla addresses Dorimenus here as if he really is a Friar who could give sanctuary to a distressed person. He responds not with the religious protection of his costume in the “gown” of a Friar, but aristocratic “gallantry” of the sword, both of which are equally able to defend the honour of a woman.

110

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

at the Freedoms he had begun to treat her with, and was resolved to leave the Place: the complaisant Fryar desired she would permit him to see her into a Chair, to which she willingly consented. He did not fail to do all that good manners would permit to oblige her to grant to him, what she had refused to the other; or at least, that she would acquaint him with her name, and where he might have the happiness of seeing her. But his Endeavours were altogether unsuccessful, and all that his Wit and Address had the power of obtaining from her, was a Promise, which he expected not that she would keep, of writing to him the next day; for she told him she knew him, and that she would, by that means, let him see she did. AS much Wit as this Counterfeit Gipsy was Mistress of, she would not perhaps have brought herself so easily off, if the Head of him who attack’d her, had not been at present too much taken up with the Vexation of being disappointed by the Nun he expected, and the Idea of making himself some amends by the complying Disposition of the other, whom Chance had thrown in his way. At his Return, he found some difficulty in singling her out again; she was in that small time of his Absence already engag’d, between a Dutch Skipper, and a Jolly Highlander; they were Companions, and which ever had the good Fortune to carry off the Prize, they had agreed between themselves that the other should not oppose the Favours she should grant to his more happy Friend.----------She listen’d to the Addresses, which both by turns were making to her; but the sight of the amiable Fryar, whose return she did not expect, made her wish she had behav’d to them with less Freedom.----------The Repulses which they both join’d to give dorimenus as he approach’d her, did not in the least prevent him from prosecuting109 his Intentions:--------------------Gentlemen, said he, this Lady is my Devotee, and tho’ she has stray’d a little from the Paths I order’d her to walk in, is still under my Care, and must return with me to her Convent. Sir, replied the Highlander, (who happen’d to be a Man of Quality,110 and one who having little else to recommend him, was more than ordinarily insolent on his Fore-fathers Merit) I would not have you take upon you too much----------the Persons with whom this Lady is at present engag’d, are not to be affronted.----------I know not whether they are or no, (resum’d the Fryar briskly) but this I am sure of, that I am not one who will tamely relinquish what I have any Right to claim. The Nun who occasion’d this Dispute, was too little acquainted with the Methods, which in such a Juncture

109 Corrected from “prosecutiug.” 110 High social rank by birth.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

 111 

were proper to be taken, and too much astonish’d to find that what at first promis’d only Diversion, should on a sudden be chang’d into a serious contrary; that she spoke not a Word, nor offer’d to oppose either dorimenus when he attempted to take her from these Gentlemen, nor to draw back from them; when on the other hand, they took hold of her, and prevented her from being led away by the Fryar: In that Confusion of her Thoughts, either Party, or if a third had interfer’d, might have done what they pleased with her, or carried her wherever they had a mind. This Irresolution encouraged the Dutch Skipper and Highlander, perceiving by it, that the Fryar was no less in reality a Stranger to her than themselves, to persist in detaining her; and Words rose so high between them, that Mr. heydegger was oblig’d to interpose, and vindicate the Orders of the Place. It was at last, by his Authority, and the Judgment of several disinterested Persons, who ran to know what had happened, decreed, that it should be the Lady herself, who only could and ought to determine. She no sooner heard this Result, than she began to think she had been in the wrong, in not declaring herself before; and recovering as well as she could from that Disorder, which her Fright had put her in, told them, that the Gentleman who had on the Habit of a Fryar, was the Person she was most acquainted with. The Vexation of the other two is not to be expressed, when they found themselves discarded, but to murmur was in vain, there was no Remedy; and they left her to the Choice she had made, and mingled with the thickest of the Crowd, to avoid the Raillery which enow of both Sexes were preparing for them. After they were gone, dorimenus gave his Charge to understand, it would be best for her to quit the Masquerade, lest any more insults should be offer’d, either by the same Gentlemen, or some others of their Acquaintance, to revenge the Contempt with which they seem’d to think themselves treated: This Suggestion was, indeed, too reasonable to be refus’d compliance with, and she consented to be guided in this Affair wholly by his Directions. He then immediately order’d a Waiter to get a Hackney-Coach,111 which having put her into, he went in himself, telling her he would not leave her till he had seen her in some place of Safety. She would willingly have excus’d him that trouble, but he was of opinion he had already taken too much, not to take more, which might probably reward both at once, and would not be hindered from this piece of Gallantry. He desir’d her, however, to give orders to what Place she would be carried; but perceiving she was at a loss, and

111 A coach, generally drawn by two horses and seating up to six, available for hire.

112

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

undetermin’d where to go, he bid the Coachman drive off from the observing Crowd, which on those Nights there is always about the Door, and then stop till he should call to him to go on. But alas! she was still as Irresolute as before; she thought it wholly improper to go directly to her own House, and could think of no other Place, which to alight at, would render her less liable to Censure. Her not being able to conclude on any thing, was a very good Pretence for dorimenus to entreat she would go to a Place of his chusing: but that was a Proposal which alarm’d her more than any thing that had yet happened, and finding there was a Necessity that she must either name some House, or consent to accept his Offer; at length she bethought her of being set down at the Woman’s, from whom she had hir’d her Habit. He had been hitherto a very obsequious Gallant, but now the time was come to prove how dangerous it is to run from such Risques.-------That amorous Fire, which never ceased to glow in the warm Breast of dorimenus, was now blazed up, and must be quenched, or turn to a consuming Consequence. He soon, both by Words and Actions, let her know it, and tho’ he aquiesced with her Desire, and consented to set her down at the Place she named; yet he assured her he was not so much a Knight-Errant,112 as to undertake the Protection of Ladies without hoping some farther Reward than a Kiss of her Hand.----------He convinced her that there was no Favour in her power to grant, which he was not covetous of possessing; and as he had the Casket113 in his power, would not part with it till he had enjoy’d the Treasure: it was in vain she told him, she was a Woman of Honour; he answer’d her, that her Honour114 should be safe in his keeping, and all the Repulses she gave him, had no other Effect than to make him prosecute the Liberties he had began with more Eagerness.----------It must be confess’d, indeed, that when she struggled with his Hands or Lips, it was not in a manner which a Woman who thought herself affronted would have done:----------It is certain that the dissolving Entertainment she had been partaker of, had melted down that Coldness which is necessary for the Preservation of chaste Inclinations; and that unusual Softness, join’d 112 From medieval narratives, a knight who seeks out adventure and opportunities to demonstrate chivalry. 113 A small box or chest to hold jewellery or other valuables. 114 In a conventional eighteenth-century doubling, “honour” here has two meanings in one sentence: Lysimena asserts that she is a woman of (sexual) virtue, while Dorimenus uses “honour” to mean reputation, which he can protect whether or not the lady is actually virtuous. The cynical divergence of definition is perhaps most famously rendered in opposition in William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675) in the character of Lady Fidget.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

 113 

with the wild Confusion of her Thoughts, render’d her incapable of saying or doing what at another time Reason and Modesty, assisted by Reflection, would have oblig’d her to. In fine, she was won.----------The wanton Fryar satiated his utmost Wish,----------but it was in such a manner, that the fair Nun could neither accuse herself of a too easy granting, nor him of an absolute Force in taking:--------------------And indeed, considering the Disorder of her Soul, hurry’d and confus’d with a thousand Ideas, all of different kinds, ’tis rather to be wonder’d at that she deny’d him any thing, than that she a little yielded to suffer, what if he pleased to take, was not in her power to have kept from him.----------But not all his Sollicitations could prevail on her, either to go with him to any Place, or to let him know her Name or Quality; this gave him an inconceivable Chagrin: she was as Curious, as he was Amorous, and the Gratification of the one without the other, left him still unsatisfied.----------But tho’ he endeavour’d with a complaisant Force to pull off her Mask whenever the Coach pass’d by where there were any Lights; yet she so well guarded her Face from his discovery, that had she been half as strenuous in her Endeavours to repel those other Efforts he had made, he had not been possess’d of the Advantages he was.----------Neither Entreaty, nor Compulsion could give him this Part of his Desire; and when he represented to her how much out of Nature it was to keep her Face conceal’d from the Man, to whom no other Part was a Stranger; she answer’d him in these or the like Terms.--------------------For Heaven’s sake, ruin me not yet more than you have done:----------I never shall forgive myself for what has happen’d this fatal Night,----------make me not more so, by the Knowledge ’tis in your power to expose me.------’Tis easy to believe he spar’d no Oaths nor Protestations to assure her, that her Character should be as safe when he should know to whom he owed the Joys he had possess’d, as while his Ignorance gave him not the Means to blast it.------But not all the Asseverations he could make of his Generosity and Fidelity, could induce her to grant him this Request:-------Nor, said he, (perceiving they were come very near the Place where she was to take leave of him) must I hope any more to be blest as I have been?----------Have I had this taste of Happiness only to make me curs’d in an eternal Loss of it.----------Many passionate Expressions to this effect he made use of, before he could get any Promise of meeting her again; but at last, feeling in herself a kind of Reluctance to be Cruel, she told him at the next Masquerade he might expect to find her.--------------------Swear then, resum’d he, (hastily plucking off her Garter,115

115 A band of ribbon or fabric tied around the leg to hold stockings up.

114

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

and cutting it in two pieces, with a Pen-knife he happened to have in his Pocket) swear that whatever Habit you appear in, you will wear this piece of Ribband on your Arm; as I assure you by every thing that is sacred, I will this Counterpart.-------In this, answer’d she, I will oblige you.----------This shall be the Sign which shall discover us to each other:----------If I find you punctual, ’tis not impossible but I may then grant what you have now but in vain attempted.----------Some close Caresses she vouchsafed to give him at parting, convinc’d him his Behaviour had not been so disagreeable to her, as to make him the Object of her Aversion; and finding she was resolv’d to persist in her Humour of concealing herself from him that Night, he would not throw away that time in pressing her to recede from it, which he thought might be better employ’d in returning her obliging Embraces, with others as strenuous, and Love-demonstrating, as the time would permit. The Door being open’d, she bid him farewel, and he order’d the Coach to drive back to the House where he had left his own Clothes, and where his Servants always waited on these Nights for his return to dress. He found there some gay Gentlemen of his Acquaintance, and they went all together to a neighbouring Tavern, where they pass’d the Hours till Morning, in a Sacrifice to bacchus.116 nature, even in the most Sprightly, requires some Cessation from her Work----------In spite of the Cogitations, this Adventure had inspir’d in the Mind of dorimenus, Sleep for a while lull’d them in his peaceful Bosom to Silence and Forgetfulness; but the soft Bonds dissolv’d, they again resum’d their Force. briscilla not meeting, as she had promis’d him, gave him a good deal of real Uneasiness:----------The Nun, who was infinitely less assiduous to preserve her Virtue, than her Face from Discovery, fill’d him with an equal share of Surprize and Curiosity.----------The little Gipsy also, who, by her Manner of accosting him, and flying to him for Protection, he imagin’d would have been well enough pleased if he had taken more pains to engage her; ran pretty much in his head.----------But briscilla, whose Charms had really touch’d his Heart, was the uppermost in his Thoughts; and he was just going to write a Letter of Complaint to her, when he receiv’d one from her, containing these Lines. To dorimenus. A MAN of your active Disposition cannot suffer a Moment to pass idly away.----------I blame you not for amusing yourself as well as you could in

116 The Roman god of wine.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

 115 

the Absence of your Mistress, and think myself rather oblig’d to you than the contrary; that among that numerous Assembly, she only who had the Habit you expected me to wear, was the Person you singled out to address: but I very much wonder, that dorimenus so fam’d for Penetration, should not discover something in the little Gipsy more worthy of his Regard, than what her Habit promised.----------Read me, and take me,------was, perhaps, what I design’d by that little Artifice; but you were too deeply engag’d elsewhere, to be at any extraordinary Pains to find out117 briscilla.

THE Emotions which rose in the Soul of dorimenus, at reading these Lines, is hardly to be guess’d at.----------Not all the Joys he had possessed in the Arms of the fair Nun, seemed a sufficient Reparation for losing the Hope of those he might have been master of; had not his Attachment to her prevented him from a more diligent search of his admired briscilla; and he half cursed the short-liv’d Rapture, which had cheated him of that which his present Desires made him imagine would have been a more lasting one.------HE was too full of Chagrin for some time, to do any thing but indulge it: but, at last, bethinking himself that briscilla would expect an Answer, he set down to prepare such a one as he thought might best excuse the Fault he had been guilty of: The ill humour he was in, rendered it much more difficult to write, than ever before he had found it; and having always been accustomed to address her in the gayest manner, to alter his Stile he thought would give her cause to imagine there was a Change in his Sentiments.----------He fear’d, in seeming more grave, he should also too seem less pleasing; and how to retain his facetious way of Writing, while his Disposition was so much the reverse, he knew not.----------And it was not till after many Blottings out,118 he, at last, finding it impossible to make any Amendment, sent these words: To the Amiable briscilla. THERE is something so cruel, in being the cause of Sin, and then reproaching one with the Guilt; that I could never have expected it 117 The 1725 source text for this edition includes quotation marks at the start of each line of reprinted letters, as does the first edition of The Surprize. This edition standardizes letters in all three novels to italics, in alignment with the first part of The Masqueraders and all later editions of The Surprize. 118 Making an ink blot to cover up hand-written text.

116

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

from my adorable briscilla.----------I confess, indeed, that I have been deceived by Appearances, but I would have you remember, dear unjust Upbraider! that had you kept your Promise, I had been as innocent in Fact, as I am still in Design:----------But it is too much to expect all Perfections in one Person; were it not for that little Spirit of Coquettry, you would be too divine for a Mortal to address any otherways than by distant Prayers and Orisons:119----------and I grant, that I would much rather dispense with that Fault, tho’ it has given me many troubles, than have you pure enough to be exempt from a Possibility of falling.-------But to be serious, if you could be sensible120 of half the Inquietude a poor Lover endures in this suspense, I know you have good nature enough to wish him some relief.-------I have suffered more for you, than I could ever have believed it was in the power of Woman to inflict; and if you continue to exercise the dominion you have over me in this tyrannical way much longer, you may expect to hear same doleful Madrigal salute your morning Pillow with an Account of my Martyrdom.121----------I know no other way I have to be revenged on you, but to hang, stab, or drown myself; and if that does not fright all others from entring into your Chains, it will, at least, lose you The most faithful of your Slaves, dorimenus.

P. S. I design to wait on you this Evening, and believe when we come to settle this Account,122 you will not forbear acknowledging yourself the only Person to blame. Till then, lovely Deceiver, adieu. HE trifled away the time as well as he could, after the sending this Epistle, till he thought it a proper Hour to make his Visit; but when he came to her House, found, to his inexpressible Mortification, that she was gone abroad. He asked her Woman if she had left no Message, but she answered

119 Prayers or supplications. 120 Aware intellectually, but also emotionally and even physically feeling the lover’s suffering. 121 She may expect to be greeted some morning with a sad song telling the tale of his virtuous suffering and death after her cruelty. 122 To settle an account is to pay a debt or bill. Pastoral and religious metaphors shift to economic ones here.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

 117 

in the Negative. As he was venting his Discontent, which it was impossible for him to restrain; her Footman came, and delivered him a Letter which his Lady had writ, and sent from the Place where she was gone.----------It contained as follows: To dorimenus. BEING, before I received yours, engaged for this Evening, I had no way to come off without appearing guilty of a Rudeness, which I am not blinded enough by Love to be easy under the Character of.----------I shall stay here till about Eleven, if you are so gallant to come and ’squire me home, my Servant will direct you where to find briscilla.

THIS gave some mitigation to his Chagrin, tho’ he plainly perceived, her going out was rather the Effect of that teazing Disposition which had so long and often frustrated his Expectations, than any other Motive.---------However, he resolved not to give over his Prosecution, and flattered himself with the Belief that some time or other he should have it in his power to be revenged on her, for all the uneasy Hours she had occasioned him. THE appointed Hour arrived, he went to the House where she was visiting.----------She made him stay some time before she would come away, and he was obliged to gratify her Humour, by staying among People whose Society was no way pleasing to him; they were old grave Relations of her’s, who did nothing but preach, and exclaim against the Vanities of the Age. ----------At last, a Hackney-Coach was ordered to the Door, and he had the Satisfaction once again to find himself alone with his, in spite of her Tyranny, adorable briscilla: He did not fail to make all the use of this opportunity the Violence of his Passion suggested: but when he was in the midst of his Protestations, she bethought her that she wanted Snuff;123 and late as it was, the Coach must drive to a Perfumer’s: they called at three or four Shops, but they were shut, and the Owners of them gone to bed.-------A sudden Thought came immediately into the Head of dorimenus; he told her he knew a Place where there was admirable good Snuff of all sorts to be had, and that they always shut up late, and bid the Coachman go to a House in such a Street where he directed him.----------When they came to

123 Finely ground tobacco ingested through the nose.

118

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

the Door, Madam, (said he) we must go in, for their Ware-house is above stairs, and as there are several sorts, I would have you take your choice of that which is most agreeable to you.---------briscilla, who did not in the least mistrust he had any other design than what his words intimated, suffered him to lead her in, with all the Freedom imaginable:-------but was strangely surprised, when, coming up Stairs, he conducted her into an Apartment which seemed rather fitted up for Pleasure than Business.-------A great number of large Wax-Lights124 show’d to vast advantage the Richness of the Furniture, than which scarce any thing could be more magnificent. A most beautiful Couch, under a Canopy of white Satin, embroidered with various colour’d Flowers, emboss’d with Gold and Silver, fill’ d an Alcove at the upper end of the Room, and the Square of it was adorned with the finest Pictures in the World, but all in amorous and Love-inviting Postures.----------She had not time to express the Astonishment she was in, when dorimenus, who now thought himself secure of his Prize, left her, to order the People of the House to bring some Snuff, as he told her; but in reality, to bespeak a Collation,125 and to let them know he should stay there all Night. This being one of those Houses whose Dependance is on nightly Lodgers, and to whom a Man, who had so many Gallantries as dorimenus, had been no small Benefactor-------he was no sooner gone, than remembring herself, she had seen several other Doors as she came up, Curiosity led her to endeavour to find out if the other Rooms were furnish’d in the manner this was. She went softly thro’ the Gallery, and pushing open a Door which was not lock’d, but stood half shut, she saw a Gentleman lying on a Bed; the first Glimpse she had of him, discovered him to be her Brother, and not being very willing he should find her abroad so late, and under the conduct of dorimenus, she started back immediately, and got into the Room again with infinitely more Precipitation126 than she had left it.-------She had no sooner taken Breath, than she began to consider what Adventure could possibly bring beaumaurie, (for so her Brother was called) into that House; and presently imagined it to be, what indeed it was, a Place of Rendevous for those who prefer their Passion to their Honour; and the Fright that ’twas possible he might have seen, and known her, as well as she had him, and the Vexation that dorimenus had dared to proceed so far, made her

124 Wax candles, distinct from cheaper tallow candles. 125 Order a light meal. 126 Hurry.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

 119 

unable to stay a moment.----------Not giving herself time for Reflection, she ran down stairs, resolving to get out of the House, and take her Chance for going home as she could.-------She was at the bottom of the staircase when dorimenus met her, as he was returning, after having given the necessary Orders; Whither in such haste, Madam! (said he, stopping her, and perceiving she looked very much confused.) Any where, (answered she) to avoid dorimenus.-----No Mischief can befall me equal to that which threatens me in your company. What have I done? (resumed he, almost as much confounded as she had been) and not doubting but she had seen something which had informed her of the Place she was in, some Moments before he would have had her. You have deceived me barbarously, (said she) and I will never forgive the Trick you have put upon me. It was by these words, and some other to the same purpose, that dorimenus found he was betrayed, but how or which way, he could not imagine; till feeling it was impossible to get from him, she cry’d, For Heaven’s sake let me go; if my Brother should happen to come down, my Reputation would be undone for ever.----------There needed no more to let him into the whole matter, he knew beaumaurie was a Man of Pleasure, and that he used that House; but vented a thousand Curses on his own ill Fortune which had brought him there at a Season, so destructive to his Happiness. HE did not fail, however, to press briscilla with all the tender Eloquence he was master of, to tarry there some time, assuring her she might be as safe under the same Roof, from his Knowledge, as she would be a thousand Leagues off. I will not pretend to say how far his Persuasions might have influenced her to pardon his Boldness in bringing her into such a Place, if the unexpected Sight of her Brother, and the Fear she was in that he had seen and known her, had not put her into too ill an humour to listen patiently to any thing he said: but he might now as well hope to soften Adamant,127 or allay the Winds when mustering all their Force they drive the scattered Clouds, and threaten to overthrow all Nature, as melt her to compassionate the Violence of his Passion, which had compelled him to take this Liberty with her; or while she continued in that House, urge any thing effectual enough to mitigate her Anger for what he had done. after many fruitless Arguments, he, at last, perceived there was nothing to be hoped that Night, and ordering another Coach to be called, put her into it, without offering to come in himself, till he had her

127 Not referring to a specific substance, but rather a stone or metal of proverbially extreme hardness.

120

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

Permission.-------This sudden Change from the most bold, to the most obsequious Behaviour, rendered it an Impossibility to a Woman of her gay Temper, to retain her Indignation.--------------------She could not forbear laughing, and bidding him come in; You are resolved (said she) to be always in Extremes----------either possess’d with the Assurance of a modern Libertine,128 or a distant Awe as Romantick as the Knights of Amandis de Gaul,129 or Orlando Furioso.130 WELL, Madam! (answered he, glad to find her Severity so soon abated) I find there is nothing more difficult than to please a Lady of your nice Taste; but as you never have had any occasion, till this Night, of laying either of these Faults to my charge, I hope, you will believe me when I swear, that as it is the first, it shall also be the last time. I do not (resumed she) imagine indeed, that I shall have much reason to reproach you with the latter of these Faults; but I am terribly apprehensive, that if I should forgive your late Conduct, you would be very apt to relapse into the former, and much worse Evil.--------------------This Discourse gave him an opportunity of excusing what he had done, laying the blame wholly on the Force of Love, and protesting (with how much truth, I will not determine) that he had no farther Design in bringing her to that Place, than to engage her to hear him without Interruption.---------’TIS probable briscilla did not greatly credit what he said, but she was too well pleased both with his Person and Conversation to make a Quarrel with him; and therefore seemed to be satisfy’d with what he said. He behaved himself with the utmost Modesty all the time he was with her in the Coach, and it was by both thought improper he should go in; because if her Brother had seen her, and should hear she had been brought home by him, it might give him a just suspicion of him, and prevent her 128 In general, a seducer, but more specifically in the eighteenth century, a man of privilege who chooses not to follow established regulations, particularly those related to religion and sexuality. 129 Amandis de Gaul is a medieval romance that was widely known, and became particularly influential after its first known printing in 1508. It is a tale of noble knights errant and heartfelt love. 130 In Ludovisto Ariosto’s early sixteenth-century epic poem reporting the heroic and romantic adventures of several men and women in the context of the war between the Christian emperor Charlemagne and the Saracen King Agramante. As the title indicates, Orlando goes mad for love, but eventually has his wits restored. The story was widely known in the early eighteenth century, both in translations of the poem and in other forms such as two Italian operas by Giovani Ristori in 1713 and 1714. Handel would write his Orlando in 1733.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

 121 

from excusing herself by saying she had been in that House only with a female Friend, who happen’d to call there on some Business:-------they parted therefore before the Door was opened, and the Coach driving away immediately, it was not in any body’s power to say she had been conducted by him. THE remainder of this Night was past by this Lady, in a manner vastly different from what the former ones had been; all the Vivacity of her Disposition was not sufficient to defend her from those disturb’d Emotions, which the fear of being expos’d to her Brother’s Reproofs had rais’d in her.----------She was sensible that what Liberties soever the Men allow themselves, they are severe enough on those the Women take, especially those of their own Family; and that to have been in such a House himself, would be no Alleviation to his Sister’s Crime in being found there.---------To these Inquietudes, she had others, which the little Time she had been used to allow for Reflection, had never before presented her with: When she consider’d on the Boldness dorimenus had treated her with, and the Impossibility it was for her to find in her heart to deny herself the dangerous Pleasure of his Conversation, she found she was much more in Love with him, than till now she had ever believ’d; and the Uncertainty how she should behave, and the Knowledge of the Inconstancy of his Nature, made her almost mad.--------------------The Morning found her in as much Perplexity: But she had not been long out of her Bed, before her Brother came to visit her, and entertaining her with his usual Freedom, and good Humour, put her out of the fear that her Ramble131 had been discover’d by him, and eas’d her of the greatest and most formidable Part of her Chagrin. IN the Afternoon dorimenus came, impatient to know the success of her Fears, and was transported to find they had not been Prophetick, and that she was in a Humour more favourable to his Wishes than he could have hoped:----------She listened to the Declarations he made her with greater Attention, and answer’d not only more seriously, but also with more Tenderness than she had been accustom’d. Several Days, nay, some Weeks past on without any Alteration in her Behaviour: He began to think she had thrown the Coquette entirely off; and tho’ he obtain’d no more of her in Fact than he had done the first Moment he beheld her, yet he found she was now really in love with him, and had too much Experience of the

131 Typically a walk taken for pleasure, though here implying an excursion wandering from the moral path, in a doubled usage similar to that used by Rochester in his salacious poem “A Ramble in St. James’s Park.”

122

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

Force of that Passion, to doubt of obtaining, as soon as a fit Opportunity should offer, all he could desire. THE Masquerade, having often been a Scene favourable to his Wishes, and even the last time not unlucky, any otherwise than thro’ his mistake, he thought that the most proper Place for the Catastrophe132 of his Design; and the Day drawing near, in which the second Part of that Diversion for this Season was to be open’d, he found it no difficult Matter to persuade her to meet him there, and by her late Behaviour had good Reason to assure himself she would not deceive him as she had done before. THE Dresses they now agreed to wear were a Shepherd and Shepherdess; briscilla herself having made choice of that innocent Resemblance, which she told him she hoped might be an Omen of his Constancy and Faith:----------She did not absolutely promise to give herself to him at this meeting, but her Looks, the kind Consenting in her Eyes, and Blushes whenever he said any thing which gave her cause to think he flatter’d himself with such a Hope, made him not doubt but that he should be as happy as he could be, in the full Gratification of his utmost Wishes. BUT all this while the kind Incognita, the nameless Nun, was but little remembred; the Raptures she had bestow’d, quite lost and overwhelm’d, amidst that Sea of Extasy, which, with the bare Expectation of enjoying briscilla, rush’d on the Soul of the for ever inconstant dorimenus.----------He was, however, so much a Man of Honour, as to be concern’d at the Necessity there appear’d to be of his falsifying the solemn Oath he had taken of meeting her at the next Masquerade, and also had a share of Curiosity in his Nature, which vex’d him to the Soul, when he consider’d that by missing this Assignation, it would be ridiculously vain to hope any thing could ever happen to discover hereafter what he so much long’d to know, that to gratify that Desire, he would have foregone any thing but briscilla. The nearer the time approach’d, the more he was perplex’d; but at last, Invention furnish’d him with a Stratagem, which tho’ not conformable to the nicest Rules of Honour, he resolv’d to put in practice. HE had a very great intimacy with a Gentleman, whose name was carlos, to him he communicated the whole Affair; and giving him that piece of Ribband, which had been part of the Nun’s Garter, desir’d he would wear it on his Arm; and in whatever Habit the Lady appear’d who had

132 Final event.

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

 123 

the Counterpart of that on the same Place, he should accost her in Terms suitable to the Person who had taken it from her: Our Statures, said dorimenus, are much the same, nor are our Shapes very different, she may easily be deceiv’d; ’tis possible you may discover, by her Conversation, who she is, in a little time: but if not, after what has past between us, and taking you for me, she will scarce refuse letting you into the Secret before you part. carlos assur’d him he would observe his Commands punctually; and the other told him, he would not scruple a more unpleasing Task, to requite the Obligation he confer’d on him, in contributing to the Gratification of his Curiosity. Both parted perfectly satisfied with the Agreement they had made, and dorimenus had nothing now to think on but the Happiness he was to enjoy133 with briscilla. AT length the wish’d for Day arriv’d, the former Part of it was pass’d as usual, in Preparations for the latter.----------dorimenus spar’d no Pains nor Expence, to make himself appear a Swain more lovely, more graceful than those Sir philip sidney describes on his Arcadian Plains,134 nor was briscilla less careful in adorning herself with all the becoming Ornaments which were proper to the Habit. The extreme desire one had to compleat his Conquest, and the other to preserve that she had gain’d, of which, that Night seem’d to be the Crisis, made them more than ordinarily Curious. ----------They soon singled each other out, and neither having any Amusement there, which promis’d so much Satisfaction, they kept together without mingling with the Crowd.----------But as well pleas’d as dorimenus was in the Society of his belov’d briscilla, and as much transported as he was with the hope of obtaining from her that Night what he so long, and so ardently had sought in vain; he could not forbear casting his Eyes often among the Assembly in search of the Garter’d Lady; he saw his Friend with the Badge of the same Order, busily hurrying up and down, but it was a good while before his Companion appear’d: At last he had the Satisfaction to see the two green Ribbands meet, and retire together as far as they could from the rest of the Company:----------This was all he wish’d, and now assuring himself, that the next Day when he saw carlos, he should have the full Gratification of his Curiosity; he began to make use of his utmost Endeavours to procure that which his Love requir’d; and to that end, press’d 133 Corrected from “enjoy’d.” 134 A reference to Sidney’s sixteenth-century narrative, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, a pastoral romance in prose, graced with several complex romantic plots and handsome young men, many of whom are at times using disguise (sometimes as shepherds) for love, seduction, or a combination of the two.

124

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

briscilla to afford him some moments of her Conversation, in a place where they might be free from Interruption.----------That Lady, who had not so long held out against the Charms of dorimenus, but that the Fears of his Inconstancy enabled her; being by his continued Assiduities, and the Protestations he made her, reliev’d from those Doubts; made but little hesitation in complying with his Request: but told him, she would not go to that House where he had carried her before; she look’d on it, she said, as an unlucky Place, and that to reflect on the Fright she had been in there at the unexpected sight of her Brother, was almost enough to make her forswear ever trusting herself with him again.----------This was a new Matter of Vexation to our impatient Lover; he could not presently think on any other place, where he might conduct her with safety to her Reputation, which in spite of his Eagerness to possess her, he was yet very careful of endangering. But after a little Revolution of Thought, be remembered to have heard carlos speak of a House which had sometimes serv’d him for a Rendezvous of the same kind; and that it was a Place the most commodious that could be for such a Design.----------He question’d not, but tho’ he was a Stranger to the People of the House himself, the mentioning the Name of carlos, and saying he had been recommended by him, would be sufficient to make them receive him with a ready Welcome.----------He therefore assur’d briscilla, that the place he had provided for her Reception, was not that she had been in before, and that it was where there was not a Possibility of her meeting with any thing which could give her cause of Disquiet.----------Well then, said she, (with a half Sigh) since you will have it so, and I must go, we may as well go now as hereafter. He was ready to take her in his Arms at these Words, but that not being a Place to indulge his Raptures in, he was obliged to content himself with a gentle Pressure of her Hand, and some Words of Extasy which he could not restrain himself from whispering out. A Coach was immediately called, and away they went, where dorimenus found his Hope had not deceived him----------the Name of carlos was sufficient to introduce him; and indeed, without that, the good Woman of the House was pleased to tell him, his own good Mein would, of itself, have been Recommendation which she could not have refused.---------dorimenus answered this Compliment with his accustomed Gallantry, and they were presently conducted into an Apartment not at all inferior to that which had so much surprised briscilla at the pretended Perfumer’s. IT is not to be doubted, but that dorimenus entertained her in a manner becoming his Love, and the Generosity which almost always attends that Passion; nor by what has been already said of the compliable

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

 125 

Disposition that Lady was in at this Time, will any body judge she behaved to him with too much Reserve.-------In fine, he was at last a Conqueror; the lavish Fair left him no more to wish, but gave him all the Joys which Love and Beauty can bestow at once.----------Now was this transported Lover blest, even beyond his utmost Expectation. He found by that Infinity of Rapture-------that wild Excess of raving Extasy, with which she received his Embraces, that it was neither owing to a cold Tastelessness of Nature, nor to an Indifference of the Perfections he was master of, that she had so long refused to bless him.-------There was a Softness in her Manner of Behaviour to him, which he, at this time, imagined he had never found in any other Woman.-------He was ravished to that degree, with the Possession of this Charmer, that he could not forbear breaking out into such kind of rapturous Expression as these-------Oh! what a Heaven of Delight, (said he, embracing her) it is to find a Mistress like my briscilla! adorned at once, with all her Sex’s Graces:----------Young, Gay, Beauteous, and willing to the Joy! Above the dull Formalities of Ceremonies and Custom, the Rule of Fools! Thou! Thou! my Angel, art all in one, that’s Excellent in Womankind------’TIS certain, that never had he given a greater Loose to amorous Desires, than at this time; but the Joys he possess’d at present, seemed raised by his ill Genius, to a more elevated Height than usual, on purpose to make the coming contrary, more galling. Happening to go out of the Room135 to give orders for something he thought wanting for the Entertainment of the dear Partner of his Transports, he met on the Stairs, the very Man whose Name he had made use of:-------He was not at all displeased at seeing him; but presently told him, that having an Engagement with a belov’d Mistress, which was the cause that he had entreated him to supply his place in Addressing to the Lady with the Garter, he had been received in that House thro’ his Name.-------You are always a happy Man, answered carlos, but I am very glad my Name had the power of contributing toward it. dorimenus, whose Curiosity was still impatient, immediately asked him if he had made the Discovery he desired of him. No, said the other Coldly.-------But, (continued he, a little uneasily) I cannot stay to hold any Conversation with you at present. THESE Words, and the manner in which they were spoke, prodigiously alarmed dorimenus: Whatever Engagements you may have, (resumed he) I believe I have not less delightful ones; you may therefore spare so

135 Corrected from “the the Room.”

126

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

much time, as to let me know by what Accident you were prevented from doing what I so earnestly entreated, and you so solemnly promised.---------I cannot now, indeed, (reply’d the other, and was running up to avoid him.) The manner of his Behaviour made dorimenus immediately fancy he had plaid the Traitor with him, and circumvented him in the Affections of his Incognita; and resolving to be satisfy’d, not doubting, but that if it were so, she was at that time in that House with him, he followed therefore, in pursuance of this Thought, with as much Precipitation as the other went; and being the nimblest of the two, was in the Room as soon as he.-------But, O Heavens! with what Words is it possible to represent the Amazement, the Confusion, the mingled Rage and Horror which all at once invaded his Soul, and, for a while, deprived each Faculty of its proper Function, when he beheld lysimena, his own Wife, in company with carlos! He saw the Garter on her Arm, and by that Token found she was the Woman whom he had as a Mistress enjoy’d, and whom he doubted not but had granted the same Favour to the other.-------Distraction was mean to what he endured-------had he not been unarmed for Revenge, his Sword being in that Room where he had left briscilla, he certainly had struck that injurious Violater of his Honour that Instant dead: for well he was assured that carlos knew lysimena to be his Wife, having often seen her in his frequent Visits to him. But wanting any other Weapon of offence, and possess’d with a Rage impossible to be restrained, a Bottle and Glass, standing on the Table, he catched them up, and flung them with all his force, in the Face of carlos; who provoked by the hurt, immediately drew, and had, perhaps, seconded the Injury he had already done him by another more mortal one, if lysimena, who all this time had stood like one deprived of motion, had not at that Sight gained Presence enough of Mind to interpose, and ward off the Blow.-------The noise they made, alarmed the People of the House, who came running up to know what was the matter.----------Every one of the Persons concerned, was in too much confusion, tho’ for different Reasons, to be able to retain any great Presence of Mind, and between them every thing was made plain enough, it was136 not in their power to make any Reconciliation in a Quarrel such as this; all they could do, was to get carlos out of the way, which, at last, they did. WHEN the unhappy lysimena found herself alone with her Husband, she threw herself on her Knees, entreating him to forgive this Indiscretion;

136 Corrected from “it was was not.”

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

 127 

for she swore it had proceeded no farther, and solemnly vowed never to be guilty of the like again. The Reader may easily judge how little he gave credit to her words; having himself experienced the Levity of her Humour: but he found by her pretending to be innocent, that carlos had not discovered to her, that it was to her Husband, in the Habit of a Fryar, she had first proved how little difficult it was to melt her into a criminal Softness. And not able to contain himself at her Hypocrisy, and regarding not that by this Discovery he testify’d himself equally guilty, he told her the whole story, how deceived by the Habit of a Nun, in which he expected another Lady to appear, he had attack’d her; and that it was no other than he himself who had acted the Gallant, and taken off her Garter, and cut it; but that not being willing to pursue the Amour, he had given his part to carlos: disguising nothing of the Truth, but the reason why he deputed that false Friend to supply his place.---------HAD lysimena been as Heroick as some lately detected Ladies, she would have made no scruple of avowing her Crime, and vindicating it from the Example of her Husband; but she had been bred in the Country, in the most perfect Innocence and Resignation imaginable, and had nothing to say for herself, but, that since she was frail, it was only the Wit and artful Insinuations of him, which could have made her so. dorimenus gave but little heed to this Compliment, nor to any thing else she said; but after some time of Consideration, thought it the best way to make as little noise as could be of this Adventure; and ordering a Chair to be call’d, bid her go home, and thank Heaven she had not a Husband of the Humour of an Italian one, who would not have fail’d to have reveng’d himself in the most cruel manner. The poor Creature, half frighted to death, made him a low Curt’sy, and obey’d. briscilla, who had heard the Disturbance, tho’ utterly ignorant of the Cause, made no doubt but that something very mischievous had happened, by the tarrying of dorimenus, and endur’d not much less from the Instigations of her Fear, in the Uncertainty what it was, than lysimena had done in the Knowledge she was detected.----------She shut herself into the Room, and dorimenus was oblig’d, at his Return, to knock at the Door, and call several times, before she could assure herself it was he. AT his Entrance, he said as many kind things to her, as the Humour he was in would give him leave to do, to excuse his Absence, which he told her was occasion’d by some Gentlemen of his Acquaintance, who happening to be in that House, and a little in Liquor, would have forc’d in to see who he had got with him.----------This Pretence pass’d current enough with her, who could not leave any Suspicion of the Truth: This also serv’d

128

The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity II

for an Excuse, for waiting on her home, something sooner than she might have expected from the Ardency of the Passion he profess’d;-------for not being able to resume a Behaviour proper to entertain a Mistress, he told her that he fear’d those Gentlemen would return, and it was not safe for her to tarry. A Promise of seeing her the next Day, made up for the Loss of him so soon this Night; and they parted with a mutual Satisfaction of each other, tho’ both sufficiently chagrin’d at the cause of their Separation. ’TIS easy to believe, there pass’d between dorimenus and his Wife but little Demonstrations of Love that Night, nor ’tis believ’d will they ever be reconcil’d:-------For as before they had a perfect Indifference for each other, ’tis now grown to a down-right Hate; and perhaps will, in time, cause an entire Separation.----------His Intrigue with briscilla continues as yet, she is Mistress of a great deal of Wit, and finds Methods to retain the Heart of this gay Inconstant, which none of her Sex before were ever Mistress of; which makes good the Poet’s Words, That Mistress ne’er can pall her Lover’s Joys, Whose Wit can whet whene’er her Beauty cloys.137

F I N I S.

137 These lines are spoken twice in George Farquhar’s comedy, The Constant Couple, or A Trip to the Jubilee (1699). In II.ii, Sir Harry Wildair recites these lines to fellowsuitor Vizard in reference to Lady Lurewell, a London lady who maintains five suitors, each of whom is aware that her affections are divided, but none aware of how widely. Readers may have been expected to recall the lines that follow: “Her little amorous frauds all truths excel, / And make us happy being deceiv’d so well.” In III.i Vizard repeats the quoted lines to Colonel Standard, expecting him to demand a duel with another suitor, clearing Vizard’s path. In the end, Lurewell chooses Standard, who is discovered to be the man who loved and abandoned her at age fifteen after their engagement, but has actually been constant to her for the intervening years.

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 131 

Title Page 1724 first edition

THE SURPRIZE; OR Constancy Rewarded.

By the AUTHOR of The Masqueraders, or Fatal Curiosity.1

Love’s an heroick Passion, which can find No room in any base degen’rate Mind: It kindles all the Soul with Honour’s Fire, To make the lover worthy his Desire. Dryden.2

LONDON: Printed for J. ROBERTS, near the OxfordArms in Warwick-Lane. M.DCC.XXIV.

1 The 1724 copytext (Ab.14.1a) uses this semi-anonymous attribution, but the Secret Histories editions name Haywood on the title pages to The Surprize. 2 Almanzor and Almahide, or The Conquest of Grenada, The Second Part (I.i 145–8). The lines are spoken by Queen Isabella of Spain as part of her demand that the lovers Ozmyn and Benzayda be permitted to live in sanctuary in Spain, despite King Ferdinand’s having sentenced Ozmyn to death for the murder of a Spanish soldier. The speech ends with the assertion that “they shall overcome who love the best” (I.i 54).

132

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

TO Sir Richard Steele.3 SIR, THE next Step to having Merit one’s-self, is to admire it in another; and that I no sooner testify’d how very much I am sensible of yours, was only owing to my desires of doing it in a manner more worthy your Acceptance. I flatter’d myself that I should one day have it in my power to lay at your Feet, something less unworthy of your Patronage,4 than the Trifles I have hitherto been capable of producing: But, alas! the Wings of my Ambition in this, as in almost everything else, are clip’d; and all I can do, is, to prove I have the Will, but want the Power to please. YET, Conscious as I am of my own Defects, my Impatience has got the better of my Humility.----------I no longer can refrain that Publick Acknowledgment which is your Due from the whole World, whom your inimitable Writings have improv’d: Others may boast the instructive Art in some one Science to embellish Learning; but you refine the Mind, and make it fit for elevated Impressions.----------You, Sir, teach us how to Think, as well as Act; and by inspiring us with just and noble Sentiments,5 render it impossible to behave in a manner contrary to them. THE little History I presume to offer, being composed of Characters full of Honour and Generosity, I thought I had a fit Opportunity, by

3 Essayist and playwright best known for writing, with Joseph Addison, The Tatler and The Spectator, two of the most influential periodicals of the early eighteenth century. Steele’s most famous play is The Conscious Lovers (1721), which offers both a moralist plot and preface that assert a need for a more morally restrained type of comedy and a more virtuous mode of hero. Steele was a staunch proponent of moral sentimentalism (on Steele and sentiment, see Hynes “Genealogy” and Wilson “Bevil’s Eyes”). Spedding notes that the dedication “contains no clear indication that the two writers were acquainted, though they had common personal acquaintances in the early 1720s” (157). 4 Rephrased in all of the Secret Histories editions as “something of which I should be less asham'd of entreating your Patronage.” 5 The word “sentiment” takes on several meanings through The Surprize. Here, it suggests felicitously phrased thoughts that are just, noble, and moral.

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 133 

presenting it to one who has made it so much his Study to infuse those Principles, and whose every Action is a shining Example of them, to express my Zeal in declaring myself with all imaginable Regard, SIR, Your Most Obliged, and

Most Obedient,

Humble Servant.6

6 The 1724 copytext is not signed, but the Secret Histories editions insert Haywood’s signature here.

The Surprize; or, Constancy Rewarded.

alinda had Beauty, Wit, Good-humour, and by the Death of her Parents, was left Mistress of a considerable Fortune in her own dispose;7 which last Article attracted a great Number of Adorers. Among those who solicited her Favour,8 there were two so equal in her Esteem, that the Regard she had for both, render’d it impossible for her to make choice of either: The Name of the one was Ellmour, the other Bellamant.9 Each had Perfections rarely to be found in an Age so degenerate as this; and if the former of these Gentlemen had the Advantage of a much longer Courtship, and better Estate than the other, the charming Bellamant had Graces which well made up for those Deficiencies.----------There was something so prodigiously enchanting in his Countenance and Manner of Behaviour, that it was scarce possible to know him, without loving him. Alinda, whether it were that her Hour was not yet come, or that she had not a Soul susceptible of the tender Passion, felt not any of those violent Emotions which are the Characteristicks of Desire: ’Tis probable, had either of them singly made his Addresses to her, she might have been persuaded to have thought herself happy in consenting; but, all things weigh’d between them, their Merits seem’d so equal, that the Scale would turn on neither side. WHILE she was in this Dilemma, a young Lady, a near Relation, whom she had not seen for some Years, came to Town; and the Pleasure she 7 Young women would not typically have control over their own wealth, as it would often be held by a guardian even in the event of the death of her parents, but this detail is common in amatory fiction, as it marks a woman who is vulnerable financially as well as physically and emotionally. 8 Sought her romantic attention. 9 The name means “a lover of beauty”; Bellamant and its variations provide a common type-name in both stage comedies and amatory fiction of the early eighteenth century.

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 135 

expected to find in her Conversation, for a while gave truce10 to all other Thoughts. But alas! she found not those Charms in her Society which it was wont to afford----------Her once sprightly Wit, and Gaiety of Disposition, was now changed to a heavy Languor.11----------She spoke but seldom, and when she did, it was in such a manner, that the Standers-by might easily perceive she forc’d herself to a Complaisance,12 which could not but be painful to her.-------Alinda, who tenderly loved her, was extremely troubled to observe this Alteration; but though she press’d her to it by all the Adjurations imaginable, she could draw nothing from her that could enable her to form any Conjecture of the Cause:----------Till one day, as they were sitting together, word being brought to Alinda that Bellamant was come to visit her, Euphemia (for that was the Name of this fair Disconsolate) starting from her Chair, and running to the Window, as though to look who it was, fell down in a Swoon on the Floor.----------’Tis hard to say, whether the Concern Alinda was in to see her thus, or Amazement at what had occasion’d it, was most predominant in her Soul; but performing all the tender Offices of Friendship, in using means for her Recovery, she at length lifted up her Eyes, but with such a Torrent of Tears, as though it was to them she was indebted for forcibly opening those Lids, which but a Moment before seem’d sealed with Death.----------As soon as she had the Power of Utterance, preventing any Interrogatories Alinda might probably have made, How long, said she, have you been of Bellamant’s Acquaintance? which the other having answer’d, But a short time: I beg, resum’d she, you will, on no account, mention to him the Name of your unhappy Cousin.----------I entreat this Favour of you, by the near Affinity which is between us, by that Friendship you have flatter’d me with, and by that which I have in reality for you:-------And in return, I will relate to you the Circumstances of a History you have seem’d desirous to be inform’d of, and which, Shame only has kept me from revealing. alinda, though more astonish’d than before, assur’d her, she would most faithfully obey the Injunction she laid on her: And, said she; wholly to remove your Doubts, I will not see him, till your discovering to me the Reasons you have for an Order, which at present appears so much a Riddle, shall instruct me in what manner I shall proceed.--------------------She had no sooner said this, than she called a Servant, commanding him to tell

10 Gave respite from. 11 A dull mood marked by lethargy and often sorrow. 12 Making herself agreeable and being polite.

136

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

Bellamant, that being engaged on Business, she could not receive the Favour13 he intended her that day. You see, resumed she, my dear Euphemia, I have, for this time, put it out of my power to gratify that Inclination too many of our Sex have for blabbing every thing that has the Appearance of a Secret: And if it will be any Mitigation of the Sorrows wherewith you seem so much oppress’d, will continue still to do so, by never seeing Bellamant more. Take heed, kind Alinda, answer’d the other, take heed, lest you promise more than you should be able to perform.----------Consult your Heart, and then resolve me, if I indeed should exact that Proof14 of Friendship from you, would it be in your power to banish Bellamant? I never yet could perceive (said Alinda blushing) that I had any Sentiments for that Gentleman, which should render the parting with him a difficulty.----------But if I were in reality guilty of that Weakness your Words seem to intimate, it must be doing a Violence to myself, greater than yet I have any Notion of, that I would not willingly risque, to make you easy. There pass’d between them many other such Expressions of mutual Friendship and Regard for the Happiness of each other: but the one being impatient for the unravelling an Affair15 which she could not yet comprehend, and the other as desirous of revealing it, they shut themselves into Alinda’s Closet; and having given strict Orders to the Servants, not to disturb them on any account whatever, Euphemia began to satisfy her Curiosity, in these Words. The History of EUPHEMIA. I Need not tell you, said she, that my Parents, by their late Misfortunes, were reduced to an Ebb too low, to be able to leave me a Fortune answerable to the Hopes with which I had been educated;16 you know all those Affairs perfectly well; as also that my Aunt in Wiltshire,17 pitying the 13 An act of kindness or good will. Here, a visit. 14 Evidence, or a trial or test of validity. 15 A situation or set of events. 16 Euphemia has been raised and educated as a member of the gentry. She would have had the education expected for a young woman of the gentry, learning lessons necessary to make herself attractive as a potential wife for a man from a good family: typically reading and writing, some music and art, skills for household management, and morals and manners. She has not been left sufficient fortune to be attractive on the marriage market, however. 17 The community of Wiltshire is located in Wiltshire county, west of London; the resort town of Bath lies just beyond the western boundary of the county. The area was a prosperous hub of the textile industry in the seventeenth century, and continues to boast today of the extravagant homes built there between 1700 and 1730. See Crittal on the history of the area.

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 137 

Disappointment which at so early an Age fell on me, took me under her Protection: but you are yet to be inform’d, with how extreme a Tenderness she treated me; all the Love which I could have expected from the fondest Mother, joined to the Freedom of a Sister, and the Complaisance of the most distant Acquaintance, I found from her. The Belief that her Affection would considerably add to my little Fortune, with the Advantages of Youth, good Clothes, and a tolerable Face and Humour, gain’d me, in a little time after I had been in her House, several who called themselves my Lovers; ----------but I was possess’d with I know not what kind of an Aversion to any Talk of that nature.--------------------I was not only unsusceptible of Love, but also regardless of Interest, for some of the Offers made would have been highly for my advantage to have accepted.----------Had my Aunt, indeed, been more pressing for me to have made my Choice among them, ’tis probable I should not have run the hazard of disobliging her; but as her Goodness to me was in every thing more than common, so it was also in this; and perceiving no Inclination in me to change the State I was in, forbore to urge me beyond my own Desires.----------O the Tranquillity I then enjoy’d!----------How calm, how undisturb’d were then my Thoughts.------No busy Cares waited on my waking Hours-------no racking Anguish haunted my Nights and broke my peaceful Slumbers.-----Life, like an unruffled Stream, slid on serenely gay.----------I was so ignorant of Woe, that I believ’d there could not be a greater than the Head-ach. As for the Disorders of the Mind, I looked on them as chimerical, unless occasion’d by some horrid Crime, and therefore unworthy Commiseration.----------O! that I still had been that happy Ideot.----------Dear-bought Experience! how hast thou undone me? A Storm of Sighs here intercepted the Passage of her Words, and she was obliged to pause, to give the struggling Anguish vent, which else might have thrown her again into the same Condition from which she had so lately been recover’d:----------But overcoming, as well as she was able, the secret Load which press’d her Spirits down, she at length resumed Strength enough to prosecute her Relation, in this manner. MY Aunt, pursued she, who, as I have a1ready told you, took delight in affording me all the innocent Recreations which were becoming me to take, would needs have me accompany some young Ladies in our Neighbourhood, who were going to the Bath,18 it being then the Season of the 18 The most fashionable resort town of the eighteenth century, Bath was famed for the supposed medicinal effects of its water. Bath was a particular destination for London residents in summer months, when those escaping London’s city heat would be entertained by regular assemblies, balls, concerts, and other gatherings.

138

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

Year when all the gay part of the World resort thither, with as great an Impatience to partake the Diversions of the Place, as the Old and Infirm do in the Hope of being restored to new Life and Health, by the help of those excellent Waters.----------You may be sure, I was not backward in complying with a Command so perfectly kind and obliging to me; and, to leave nothing undone, which could make me see she study’d my Credit,19 as well as Pleasure, she order’d several very rich Suits of Clothes to be made for me, and presented me with Jewels of hers to the Value of some thousand Pounds,20 and gave two of her Footmen commission to wait on me there, as their sole Mistress. It was thought by those who knew she was preparing to set me out in this splendid manner, that it was done with a design that, thus adorn’d, thus attended, I might get a Husband among that numerous Assembly, more to my advantage than I could in our retir’d part of the World: If it were so, which I was far from thinking, her kind Intentions found a cruel Disappointment; all those Expectations, with my Peace of Mind, were sunk, to rise no more!----------But I will not anticipate what the Discovery is I have to make, by giving you any Hints which may light Conjecture to the Sequel.----------In fine, I went, made as good an Appearance as any Lady on the Walks, and had my Vanity not a little gratify’d to find myself more addressed to than some who had been celebrated Toasts,21 and whose Birth and Fortune were infinitely superior to mine.----------I doubt not, indeed, but great part of the Respect paid to me, was owing to my Dress and Equipage;22 for being utterly unknown there, I was taken for a much greater Fortune than I was in reality. THE Variety of Humours and Amusements one finds in such Places, is agreeable enough to a Mind entirely at ease, as mine was, and unprepossess’d with any other Ideas; and as I was naturally of a Disposition rather too gay and spirituous, than the contrary, I never refused the coming into any Measures which had a Prospect of Diversion in them;----------whether the Company23 was for Riding, Walking, Dancing, Playing, I readily made one, and had the Reputation of being not the least entertaining among them.----------But soon these empty Pleasures ceased, one

19 Public reputation, but not incidentally, also suggesting the potential for exchange value. 20 Using the retail price index to calculate, goods worth £1000 in 1724 would be worth approximately £122,000 today. 21 See Masqueraders, note 95. 22 A carriage and horses, as well as the liveried servants who attend the carriage. 23 Social group.

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 139 

fatal Moment robb’d them of their Joys, and taught me to despise the gaudy, noisy Nothings, and send my Soul in search of Happiness more elevated. HAP’NING to go with one of the Ladies whom I had accompany’d from home, one Morning, with a design to bathe,24 we perceiv’d a Gentleman just coming out of it: the peculiar Richness and fine Fancy of his Night-Gown and Cap,25 immediately attracted our Eyes; but we could not long be taken up with an Admiration so trifling as his Dress, which serv’d only to make his lovely Form more conspicuous; the Nobleness of his Air, the Exactness of his Shape, the manly Majesty which sparkled in his Eyes, the thousand thousand unutterable Graces which play’d about his fine-proportion’d Mouth, too much engross’d our Sight, to leave a Glance for any other View.-------Mine it did at least, and I could have wish’d to have been all Eye, so greedy, so eager was I to gaze upon his Charms.----------The God of Love26 now rush’d at once with his whole force into my Soul, and in an Instant, every throbbing Vein swell’d with the new, the soft Desire!----------The astonishing Delight of looking on him, took from me the Power of Thought; I seem’d as tho’ riveted to the place I stood in, nor, till he was gone past my straining Sight to reach him, had Speech or Motion, though the Lady who was with me, as she afterwards told me, had several times spoke to me, and pull’d me by the Sleeve to come forward. Ignorant of what I ail’d, yet conscious of a wondrous Change within, I long’d to be alone; and, under the pretence of being suddenly a little indispos’d, refused to bathe that day, and retired as fast as I could to my Apartment. AS little an Opinion as I had of Love, I had read a great deal of its Influence; and when I examin’d the Symptoms in myself, found they were so near the Description of that Passion, that I no sooner began to compare

24 To soak in the spa waters. 25 A gentleman’s night gown is not sleepwear, but a mode of casual dress normally worn at home before dressing in more formal waistcoats and coats for excursions or visiting, or for a private evening. A version of the modern dressing gown, night gowns made of silk or other fine fabrics were worn over a shirt and breeches. While typically worn in private by gentlemen, the night gown was tolerated in public in Bath until later in the century when the rules of the baths and assembly rooms specifically required more formal dress: in 1713, The Guardian reported that “The Bath countenances the men of dress in shewing themselves at the Pump in their Indian night-gowns without the least decorum.” The cap is in lieu of a more formal wig. On men’s nightgowns in public, see Fennetaux. 26 Cupid, implying that this is dangerous desire rather than benign love.

140

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

them, than I ceased to doubt if they were the same.----------Yes, I felt too strongly the Power I had so long contemned, not to repent of my former Unbelief.--------------------And from the first Moment I perceiv’d myself in Love, perceiv’d also I was unhappy; not all the Flatteries I had been accustom’d to hear, could make me hope there was any thing in me worthy of being taken notice of by a Man, so far above the common Rank of Men, as to his bodily Perfections, and who, I knew not, but might be of a Quality which might render all hope of a return of Passion from him as insolent, as vain.--------------------Resolving, however, to be ascertain’d who he was, and, if it was possible, have one more sight of him, I dress’d myself in the most becoming manner I could, believing that in all probability he would be on the Walks27 in the Evening; or if he were not, I should easily find some one or other, who, by my Description of him, might know him enough, to be able to inform me of his Name and Quality.----------Between the time of my seeing him, and that to walk in, I had various Conjectures what the Reason should be which had oblig’d him to remain retir’d in a place so publick; for I was certain he had very little appear’d abroad, because there was no Assembly in which I had not a part, and could not think he was lately come, the Season being far spent, and the Company were beginning to think of a Return.----------However, in spite of Improbability, this last happen’d to be the Truth; for I had no sooner enter’d the Walks, than I saw him there, with an Air and Mien which methought gave a new Lustre to the Place. THE Freedom used there, gave him an opportunity of accosting me, and the Ladies with me, which he did in a manner far above my hopes; and, in the way of Conversation, let us know how unhappy he thought himself to lose so much of the Season, which had been occasion’d by a Fall from his Horse in coming there, being oblig’d to lie a considerable time on the Road to recover some Hurts that Accident had given him.---------Just as he was speaking this, some Company joining us on the other side, with whom my two Companions were talking, To be confin’d so long, Madam, said he to me, in an odious Inn, was to a Man naturally fond of Delicacy, an unspeakable Mortification; but my Misfortune had been by infinite degrees more terrible to be borne, had I known it had detain’d me from the Presence of a Charmer such as you. I will not go about, my dear Alinda, to represent with how much Transport I receiv’d this little

27 Bath had several public walks, scenic paths maintained for easy walking; there were also private walks associated with some bathing houses.

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 141 

Compliment, nor the manner in which I answer’d it; you will hereafter have sufficient Proofs of my Weakness, without spinning out my Narration to a tedious length by the repetition of Trifles: so I shall only say, this was but the Introduction to a thousand more passionate and tender Declarations.----------In fine, he behav’d himself in such a manner, in spite of the Disadvantages of being in a place so publick, and unfit for Discourses of that nature, that I half flatter’d myself I had been capable of creating the same Emotions in his Soul, which I felt so powerful in my own on his account.---------I went to bed that Night, with Reflections far different from those which had used to accompany me.----------I now knew what it was to hope and fear ----------to raise my tow’ring Expectations to the Skies, then sink them with as little shew of reason down to Hell, just as wild Fancy28 and unguided Thought presented an Idea of Events, or to be wish’d, or dreaded:---------­confounding Probabilities with their contraries----------forming a thousand incoherent Resolutions; yet unable to determine any thing-------In all the sweet Perplexities, the pleasing Restlessness that attends new-born Desire, did I pass the Hours till the Dawn arriv’d; at which time I rose to dress, being to meet him by appointment, to share the Pleasures of a morning Walk, which he said was infinitely more agreeable, than the times generally made choice of for that purpose.----------Judge not too severely of my Weakness, dear Alinda, that I so imprudently consented to meet a Man alone, a Man whom I had never seen but that Day, and whose very Name I was yet a stranger to: if ever you have experienc’d the force of raging, burning Love, you will forgive and pity my Proceedings, not only that I have already related, but that which I have yet to speak.------SHE blushed and paus’d at these Words, perhaps expecting Alinda wou’d make some Answer to ’em; but perceiving she was silent, and took no other notice of the Apology she made, than by tenderly looking on her, and gently bowing her Head in approbation of it, she continu’d to go on in the Recital she had begun. TO repeat, said she, the obliging Expressions he made use of to thank the Condescension I had favour’d him with, wou’d be an Injury to them, since the Energy with which they were deliver’d, and the Looks which accompanied them, added a Charm to them, which all the Words in the world, if spoke by any other Person, cou’d not boast.----------I would have you therefore imagine, that all that can be conceiv’d of Tender, of Passionate,

28 Imagination.

142

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

all that the most eager Love and refin’d Wit29 have the power to inspire, fill’d his Professions, and adorn’d his Vows.---------THE Conversation lasted for some Hours, and ended in my permitting him to prosecute30 an honourable Pretension: after he had assur’d me he intended no other, and had acquainted me with his Name and Family, That is an Article (pursu’d she, blushing more than before) which I believe I may spare myself the trouble of relating, since I doubt not but both by my Description of his unequal’d Charms, and the Confusion with which I just now saw him at your Gate, you are already sufficiently convinc’d it was no less a Prodigy of Perfection than Bellamant, who had the power to influence me to a Weakness, which, to have been guilty of for any other Man, would not have been pardonable. IT was with all the Earnestness in the world she fix’d her Eyes on the Face of Alinda, as tho she would dive into her Soul, and read the Effect these Words made on her; but perceiving no visible Alteration, proceeded in her Discourse without any Interruption. THE Joy I had (said she, with a Voice more assur’d than before) to find that Bellamant was not of a Rank superiour to my own, nor had an Estate which cou’d entitle him to the hope of marrying a Woman with a better Fortune, than what I had in possession, and was in expectation of from the Indulgence of my Aunt, is not to be express’d.----------I now began to taste the Sweets of Love, I had every day some new Proof of his encrease of Passion, and sure never Man made so good use of his Time as he did; for from his coming to the Bath, and that in which we were oblig’d to leave it, was not exceeding ten Days; and were I to repeat the thousand, thousand soft Protestations he made me in that time, you would scarce believe as many Weeks would give them utterance. We were, indeed, from the Moment in which I permitted his Addresses, scarce an hour asunder, but in the Hours allow’d for Repose; and even those, the seeming Impatience of his Passion would infringe, and it was commonly four or five in the Morning, before he could prevail on himself to leave me.---------THE Time of our departure being come, he accompany’d us on horseback to Wiltshire; and after having obtain’d my Aunt’s leave, visited me at home with the same Assiduity he had done at the Bath.----------For the space of a Month, I would not have changed Conditions with the first Princess of the Royal Blood.-------I thought myself secure of the Affections of the only

29 See Masqueraders note 11. 30 Pursue.

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 143 

Man in the World I look’d on as worthy of a Passion so sincere and violent as mine, and one who, tho I could not live in Grandeur with, I believ’d had a Competency to maintain us in a handsome manner.----------My Aunt, having had several Conferences with him concerning Settlements and Jointure,31 approv’d of all he said, and countenanc’d32 our Affections, which seem’d to wait a Consummation33 only for a Gentleman, a distant Relation of her’s, who was a Lawyer, and was every day expected to come down and draw the Writings. At length he came, Bellamant had some talk with him on the Affair, and the next Evening was appointed for signing the Deeds.34 HITHERTO the Weakness of my inconsiderate Passion, for a Man I had so little knowledge of, was excus’d by the appearance of the greatest Honour and Sincerity on his side; but now comes the black part of his Character.----------Now, now the Disguise of an Angel is thrown off for ever, and all the Fiend35 in naked Vileness is expos’d to view.----------The Morning of that Day, which I expected was to have made him, in every thing but the ceremony of the Church, for ever mine, instead of coming, as was his Custom every Morning, to give me the Bonjour, by the hands of a Country Fellow, who liv’d in a Cottage hard by,36 I receiv’d a Letter from him.---------THE first sight of the Superscription, for I was perfectly acquainted with the Character, immediately told me who it came from.----------The sending a Letter, when I expected himself, and the odd manner in which it was brought, (having a Servant of his own, who, if any Accident had occasion’d his writing, one would think, should have been the most proper Messenger) alarm’d my trembling Heart with Apprehensions which till that moment I was a stranger to.-------A thousand various Conjectures, all

31 Legal agreements typically arranged before a marriage, establishing which parts of a family’s wealth and property would belong to or be used to support the wife after the death of her husband. 32 Looked upon with favour. 33 From Euphemia’s perspective, verbal agreements have been made, and all that seems to have been needed for the marriage to be complete was to finalize legal matters. The use of “consummation” for completion alludes also to the contemporary expectation that formalization of marriage did require sexual consummation as well. On legal requirements in different types of marriage agreements, see Probert, who notes that in contrast to what earlier generations of scholars have generally suggested, under pre1753 canon law, “exchange of consent was not a full alternative to legal marriage” (21) and could not necessarily be enforced by ecclesiastical courts. 34 Legal documents of marriage. 35 The 1732 Secret Histories prints this as “Friend” but all other editions print “Fiend.” 36 Nearby.

144

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

shocking, all confounding, ran in a moment thro my giddy Brain, and so disabled all my Faculties, that I had scarce Strength or Resolution to open it: but when I did, I found the cruel Certainty of my unexampled Shame, and his cold Perfidiousness, in these Words. To the most Excellent of her Sex, the never too much Ador’d euphemia.37 I Have for some days past, my for ever lov’d, for ever ador’d Euphemia! been endeavouring to reveal a cruel Secret, which to have hid from you, would have render’d me more guilty in reality, than I shall appear in the disclosing it; but it was not in my power, while looking on you, to tell you I must look on you no more:----------Yet such is the sad Necessity of Fate----------I must tear myself for ever from you, must resolve to gaze no more on your enchanting Eyes----------no more must listen to your heavenly Accents----------no more must be bless’d with the transporting Proofs of Love, confess’d for a Wretch, who has it not in his power to deserve the thousand, thousand Part of that Profusion of o’erpowering Joy your Goodness has so lavishly shower’d on me.----------Yes, Divine Creature! I must be curst in an eternal Absence; or by staying, and putting myself in possession of that Bliss your Extravagancy of Mercy has made me hope, make you a Sharer in Misfortunes which I tremble but to think on.----------Rather let me die in the severest Torments, or suffer the worst Misery of Life, prolong’d in tedious Woe, and everlasting Despair, than be guilty of a Crime to her whom more than my Soul I love, and next to Heaven adore.----------O! I’m on the rack while writing this.------------- ----------How was it possible I should speak it then?----------Pardon me! Pity me! ’tis all I ask for the extremest Proof of Love a breaking, bleeding Heart e’er gave.----------Farewell!----------the Tempest in my Mind rages with a Violence too fierce to permit me to add more.---------I will not even wish you should remember me, lest it might prevent your giving yourself to some happier Man, tho none can ever love you with greater Purity, and zealous Passion, than him who would have hazarded every thing but your Peace of Mind and Felicity to have been Eternally Yours, bellamant.

37 In the 1724 copytext of The Surprize (Ab.14.1a), letters are marked with quotation marks at the beginning of each line; in subsequent editions, letters are in italics, as reproduced here, in consistency with The Masqueraders.

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 145 

WHAT became of me at reading this astonishing Epistle, you may judge, by what I have told you of the Violence of my Passion for this perfidious Ingrate. The Grief, the Shame, the Indignation at being used in such a manner, were of themselves sufficient to have broke the Strings of a Heart more inur’d to Misfortunes, and better fortify’d with Presence of Mind, than mine: but to those other Passions, I had Despair and an unvanquishable Tenderness to struggle with.----------I knew not whether I was come to the Conclusion, before I fell down in a Swoon, in which I remain’d, till my Aunt, being told a Letter had been brought me, came to my Chamber to learn the Contents, and found me on the Floor with the fatal Paper open in my hand.----------She call’d her Women38 immediately to raise me, while she went aside to examine what had occasion’d the Condition she saw me in.---------BEING with much-ado brought to myself, she used all imaginable Means for my Consolation; but my distracted Brain still running on Bellamant----------I rav’d incessantly on his Name, entreating he might be sent for, that I might, at least, have the satisfaction of upbraiding him.----------That is what I would have done for you, said my Aunt; but, alas! he is gone too far for any thing to overtake, unless it be the Curses his Ingratitude to you has drawn upon him.----------How! (interrupted I wildly) is then the Traitor gone?----------He is, resum’d she; on the first discovery of what had thrown you in these Agonies, I sent to the House he lodg’d in, and by the People of it was inform’d, that he took horse last Night, after having left that Letter with a strict Charge, that they should send it by somebody they could trust, to deliver it into your own hand this Morning.---------THIS Aggravation of my Sorrows; threw me again into the Condition from which I had so hardly been recover’d, that my Aunt for some time had imagin’d my Soul had entirely taken leave of my Body.--------------------I continu’d in these Swoonings the whole Day, and in the close of it fell into so violent a Fever, that in less than a Week my Life was despair’d of by the Physicians, whom my Aunt, in the beginning of my Illness, had sent PostHorses39 to fetch, scrupling no Expense nor Care for my Recovery. But it pleased Heaven, contrary to all their Hopes, when my Distemper was at the worst, to give a sudden check to it.-------I fell into a Sleep, which by the Standers-by was believ’d to be my last, and waked considerably amended. By degrees the Violence of the Fever abated, and I was soon restor’d to

38 Maidservants. 39 Horses for hire. Because fresh horses could be hired at different inns on a longer journey, travelling by post horse was faster, as horses could be replaced rather than rested.

146

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

that bodily Health I enjoy’d before; but never, never must hope to recover the Disorders of my Mind----------they, like a Vulture, prey upon me still, and will do so while Life shall last.------A Considerable Augmentation of them I receiv’d, when being no sooner able to walk about my Chamber, than my dear Aunt fell ill; whether it were that the Disease I had labour’d under had any thing of Malignity in it, or that it was owing to her too great Concern for me, I know not; but she was seiz’d with the very same Symptoms I had complain’d of: and being of too great an Age to struggle with this powerful Enemy of Nature yielded to its force, and expir’d in a few days.----------In the very Pangs of her Death, her Tenderness for me continu’d; she made her Will, and to compensate as much as possible for the Severity of Fortune in my ill-requited Love, bequeathed me her whole Estate, having, as you know, no Children of her own. I am now Mistress of two thousand Pounds a Year,40 besides a considerable Sum of ready Money; but how little is it in the power of Riches to buy Content?----------All her Goodness has done for me, serves only to make me a more glorious Wretch.----------My Grief for the loss of so dear a Relation, and one who, but for the Contagion of my ill Fate, might probably have liv’d some Years, was for a time suitable to the Cause: But that fatal Passion which, from the first sight of the ungrateful Bellamant, had taken possession of my Soul, would suffer no other to be of any long continuance.-------------------AGAIN, the Idea of his Charms return’d with its full Force, and melted me to Wishes too shamefully tender for me to think on without Blushes.----------Again, the remembrance of his Falshood, and amazing Baseness, work’d my aching Brain almost to madness.-------I hated, and yet lov’d, my divided Soul was torn with Anguish inexpressible! insupportable! till unable to endure the cruel Conflict of such different Passions, I resolv’d never to rest till I had found him, and, if possible, oblige him to an Explanation of his Behaviour, and by the prevalence of what secret Motive he could be induced so barbarously to quit a Woman he had sworn to love, and who, before this late, unhoped Addition of Fortune, was every way his Equal.----------The first part of my Wish I have

40 A great fortune for the time. Calculated on the ability to purchase commodities, a comparable current amount would be £243,000 (using the retail price index). Using an average earnings scale to determine relative wealth in a given community, her income is equal to approximately £3,640,000 in 2011 values.

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 147 

already succeeded in, and hope also to accomplish the rest, if Alinda is pleas’d to grant me the Continuance of that Friendship she so generously has profess’d. HERE the sorrowful Euphemia finish’d her little History; and Alinda, after having condoled her Misfortune of losing the Man she was so passionately enamour’d of, entreated her to acquaint her by what means she could be capable of serving her; assuring her, with a great many obliging Expressions, that there was nothing in her power, which she would not, with the utmost readiness, comply with, either for her Satisfaction or Revenge. The first thing (answer’d the other) and, perhaps, the hardest I shall ask, is, what you have already promis’d, To banish the faithless Bellamant from your Presence. That you may depend, (resum’d Alinda) I would do for my own sake; nor can my Cousin, I hope, harbour so mean an Opinion of me, as to imagine I would continue to entertain him, after knowing he has been false to a Woman, who has a thousand times my Merit.----------You may be assur’d, that were Euphemia not my Friend, Self-preservation would be sufficient to prevent me from being her Rival: Therefore insist no more on that Point, but if you would oblige me, command something which may give me an Opportunity of testifying how dear your Interest is to me. There remains no more (answer’d Euphemia) than that you will, by the means of some Person who may not be suspected, make an Enquiry into his Affairs; I would be acquainted, if possible, with the very depth of his Circumstances; for you must know, that since I heard he made Pretensions to you, I have hope to find him less a Villain than I believ’d.---------How is that likely? (interrupted Alinda, a little surpriz’d at these Words:) In my Opinion, to address another Woman, after having so solemnly and so publickly avow’d himself your Lover, is the very last degree of Infidelity and Baseness.--------------------It is, indeed (resum’d the other, with a deep Sigh) far different from that open Sincerity and Honour he used to say was his greatest Plea for Favour: but when we have cause to think a Person guilty of the most abhorr’d Crime in nature, to find it less than we at first believ’d, makes it appear less than in reality it is. I could think of nothing which could occasion his quitting me just at that Juncture, when I was to have been made his for ever, but that he was already married; and finding I had Friends of more Interest, than perhaps at first Acquaintance with him he had imagin’d, durst neither proceed further, nor confess the Truth; and therefore by that Ænigmatical way of writing, left me at liberty to form what uncertain Conjectures I pleas’d.----------But to hear that here in Town, a place, where, doubtless, he is known, he has endeavour’d to obtain you in Marriage, convinces me, it

148

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

was not a Pre-engagement which depriv’d me of him. Would it then (cried Alinda) be any Mitigation to your Griefs, to be assur’d, it was from no other Motive than Disgust, he left you? euphemia, tho’ very far from that Vanity by which too many of her Sex are sway’d, could not help red’ning extremely at this Expression: To become an Object of Dislike to the Man, whose Adoration once we were, is what no Woman can support with Patience; and being of a Temper the most open and sincere that could be, I know not (said she) if it would lessen my Grief; but am certain, when I consult my Heart, it would very much add to my Indignation; which in time, perhaps, would enable me to overcome the other less excusable Passion. I cannot acquiesce with you in this (resum’d Alinda) I think, that tho’ either way you have sufficient Cause for Indignation, the first Opinion you had of him after the Letter, gave you the most justifiable Title to it----------because, had that Conjecture been true, he had been guilty of a Sin, for which our Laws have decreed a Punishment as severe as for Murder;41 whereas the other proceeds only from the fault of Nature, an inborn Inconstancy and Ingratitude, which all Men, more or less, have some share of.----------I am not arguing (answer’d the other somewhat peevishly) which of these two would be the greatest Sin against Heaven, or our Laws, but that which is so against myself. THE Dispute between these Ladies lasted a pretty while, but Alinda’s better Reasons in the end prevail’d, and they broke off the Conversation, that she might retire to her Closet42 to prepare a Letter, which was to discard Bellamant for ever----------As soon as she had finish’d it, she return’d to Euphemia, to have her Approbation of what she had written, before she sent it.----------She used but little Formality in her Denial, taking more Care that it should appear absolute, than complaisant: The Words were as follows.

41 While both adultery and murder are included in the biblical Ten Commandments, and thus might be seen as equal in theory, in practice, by the 1720s, legal punishments for adultery were not often pursued, with the exception of Criminal Conversation civil suits, in which a husband might seek financial damages from a man accused of an adulterous relationship with his wife. David Turner documents that “by the 1730s, prosecutions for adultery in London had virtually ceased, as marital infidelity came to be viewed by the legal authorities as a ‘private vice,’ no longer subject to public prosecution” (5). 42 A private sitting room.

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 149 

To BELLAMANT. SIR, I Am sorry I did not, before now, put an end to the Trouble you have given yourself in your fruitless Addresses to me, but send this, to intreat you will desist visiting me; for, having resolv’d to give myself to another, it may create an Uneasiness in him, whom I would wish only to make happy.-------I own your Merits, but you know there is no account to be given for Inclination; which not being in your favour, I hope you will take this as a final Answer from alinda.

NEVER Woman gave a greater Proof of her Friendship to another, than she did in discarding Bellamant; for tho’ her Mind had been very much divided between two, as she thought, of equal Merit; yet she found a Charm in Bellamant’s Conversation, which made it not altogether so easy, as she pretended, to part with him: However, it was not to her disadvantage; for, perhaps, it never would have been in her power to have made her choice, if this Discovery of his Engagement with Euphemia had not happen’d to turn the Balance wholly on the side of Ellmour. BUT to return: Euphemia was extremely satisfy’d with what her obliging Cousin had writ, and it was sent away immediately; but very much fail’d of the Effects they imagin’d it would have on the Heart of him who receiv’d it: for tho’ he was, for some Reasons which shall hereafter be related, a little vex’d at the Disappointment, he had others which prevented him from repining much at her want of that Affection, he had flatter’d himself with the Belief that Lady had for him. ALINDA was no less diligent in the Performance of her other Promise, than she had been in this: She engag’d a Person, very well qualify’d for such an Undertaking, to make a diligent Enquiry into the Circumstances of Bellamant; and in a few days he brought them Intelligence, that Gentleman was far from being what he was generally believ’d, that his Estate was too deeply mortgag’d for him ever to redeem it, and that he was also involv’d in other Debts; which, put together, would amount to a very large Sum. THESE Tidings abated great part of the Indignation Euphemia had conceiv’d against him: She now began to imagine, that it was indeed the Fear of making her unhappy which had made him break off the Match with her; and tho’ her Womanish Pride would not suffer her to forgive

150

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

his carrying his Addresses elsewhere, yet she thought of him with a Compassion which wanted not much of that Tenderness with which she had formerly regarded him. These favourable Sentiments were very much heighten’d in her, when the same Person who had brought the former Account, came with a second, more melancholy than the other; it was, that the Creditors of Bellamant,43 who, it seems, had delay’d giving him trouble, only on being told he was to be marry’d to a great Fortune, hearing the Affair was at an end, had thrown him into Prison, whence, it was believ’d, he never would return.44 NOW was Euphemia convinc’d, it was not through Dislike he quitted her, and the extreme Passion she ever had for him, having Pity added to it, o’erflow’d her whole Soul with such a Tenderness, that ’tis to be doubted if ever she lov’d him so well as in this Ebb of Fortune, rejoicing it was in her power to redeem him from the Calamities he labour’d under. She sent immediately to raise the Sum for which he was confin’d, resolving to set him free; but at the same time resolv’d also to prove how much he merited that Tenderness: She form’d a Scheme which must infallibly let her into the Secrets of his Heart. THE Moment she receiv’d the Money, she sent to procure the Freedom of her beloved Bellamant, paying off all the Demands that were made on him both by his Creditors, and the Prison-Keepers. The Person who was entrusted in the Affair, being charg’d not to appear before Bellamant, he had no notice of what was done for him, till the Goaler told him he was at liberty, and that all his Debts were entirely clear’d; and this he was oblig’d to repeat many times, and confirm the Truth of what he said by Oaths, before that unhappy Gentleman could believe he was in earnest; nor, till he saw himself without the Prison-Walls, could he think his Deliverance was real.----------But when found he was indeed free to dispose of himself as he pleas’d, ’tis difficult to determine whether his Joy at being so, or Amazement from what hand so unexpected a Relief was given, had the most share in his Soul.----------It was Night when he was discharg’d, and too late to go any where but to his Bed, to recover

43 Corrected from “Bellamont” in 1724 copytext; Secret Histories editions are “Bellamant.” 44 Until 1869 debtors in England could be imprisoned until they paid or made other arrangements with their creditors. Since prisoners were charged fees for their keep, with no way to earn additional money, debtors’ prison created a vicious cycle difficult to escape unless debts were paid by others.

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 151 

the Fatigue and Disorder which he had suffer’d in his late Lodging, but intended to go in the Morning to all those of his Friends, who he thought had either the Will or the Ability to do so generous an Action.----------He was, in spite of his Misfortunes, of a Nature too noble to endure the Weight of such an Obligation, without knowing to whom he was indebted for it.--------------------He was as uneasy to express his Gratitude, as some, after doing such an Action, would have been to receive the Retributions due to it; and it was the Thoughts by which means he should arrive at the Knowledge of his Benefactor, which kept him from enjoying that Repose which otherwise he might have taken, and rous’d him from his Bed much earlier than he had ever been accustom’d. He was dress’d, and just going out, when at the Door he met Ellmour, who, after accosting him with the usual Civilities of the Morning, told him, he had a word or two of consequence to say to him, and desir’d he would walk a little way from the House. Bellamant was of too complaisant a Disposition, to refuse a Request of this kind, tho’ made him by his Rival, and one who he knew had, since his Acquaintance with Alinda, both envy’d and hated him.----------When they had walked a few Paces, Bellamant (said he) notwithstanding that Animosity which must of necessity arise from Competitorship in Love, I was unfeignedly concern’d for your late Misfortune, and should have rejoiced to hear you were deliver’d from it by any other means than those you are.----------But as your present Condition is as far above my Hopes, as that from which you are freed is below my Fears, you must not think to triumph over me in all.----------Tho’ you have got the better of me in Love, you shall not in Revenge----------at least we’ll try who most deserves Alinda’s Favour. THE Hebrew Language to an Ideot could not be less intelligible than were these Words to Bellamant; and expressing his Ignorance of what he meant, by Queries commonly made use of when one cannot comprehend the Sense of what is spoke, the other imagin’d he was studying for an Evasion to put him off.----------It is by such Artifices as these (cried he fiercely) that you have supplanted my Interest with Alinda: but-------He was going on, when Bellamant, surpriz’d more than before, interrupted him, saying, Hold, Ellmour, either you come to trifle with me in the manner you accuse me of, or somebody has misinform’d you.----------I doubted not but you were the happy Man for whose sake I was discarded. ’Tis false, resum’d the other, half choak’d with rising Passion, you are not discarded, I am sufficiently convinc’d that was but a Fallacy to amuse the World.---------No Woman would for a Man she had not thought of marrying, disburse a Sum such as she paid for you:----------And to leave you no room for a denial

152

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

of this Truth----------know, that at the time of your Enlargement,45 which was about Eleven last Night, myself was in the Prison visiting an unhappy Friend, and saw the Person who was sent to discharge you; which being a Fellow I have often seen at Alinda’s, and whom I know she employs on several Occasions, immediately inform’d me, it was to no other than that Lady you were oblig’d.---------IS it possible! cry’d the astonish’d Bellamant, (now half believing the truth of what he said) am I then so dear to the excellent Alinda! As dear to her, answer’d Ellmour, as thou art the contrary to me-------therefore delay no longer the Satisfaction I have vow’d to take, but follow me this moment, or I will write thee Coward on every Post in town.----------He turn’d away in speaking these Words; and the other must indeed have been thought to have deserv’d that Name, so detestable to all Men of Spirit, if he had refus’d to follow him.----------Severe Prevalence of Custom, which leaves no Medium between the Extremes of Shame, or Guilt!-------A Demand of this nature renders the Man, who not immediately answers it, liable to the most opprobrious Insults; and if he does, to the Punishment the Law inflicts on Duelists.46 THE furious Ellmour went directly to a Field famous for determining these private Quarrels:47 and Bellamant, at his last Words equally enraged, was not many Paces behind him. Both their Swords were in a moment out; but before either of them had time to make use of them, their Arms were on a sudden arrested by four or five Men, who from a Covert rush’d out upon them. Bellamant, who had engag’d to fight only in point of Honour, had no reason to be concern’d at the Disappointment; but Ellmour was outrageous at it, not doubting but himself had been the occasion of this delay of that Revenge, by not writing to Alinda; which, however, he resolv’d to take some other time. AFTER having seen that Person in the Prison, and heard in what manner Bellamant had been deliver’d, he imagin’d himself as much assur’d it was done by the command of Alinda, as if he had seen herself there 45 Release from custody (being set at large). 46 Rules of aristocratic honour would demand that Bellamant accept Ellmour’s challenge, though duelling was in fact illegal. In practice, however, “few people suffered serious legal penalties for duelling; as long as the rules of honour had been followed, those duellists who killed their antagonists and were prosecuted for murder were invariably pardoned or convicted of manslaughter and given token punishments” or fines (Shoemaker 537). 47 Probably Hyde Park, which had been the site of a famous duel between Charles Mohun and James Douglas, Duke of Hamilton in 1712; the duel resulted in the deaths of both men. See Cecil for documentation on Hyde Park as a popular duelling field (33–4), and on the history of duelling in London parks.

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 153 

in person; and, full of the most violent Emotions of despairing Love, he resolv’d either to lose his own, or have the Life of his suppos’d more fortunate Rival.----------Rest was stranger to his Eyes that Night----------he went not to bed, but with the utmost Impatience watch’d the Dawning of that Morn, which promis’d him either a Period of his Misfortunes by his own Death, or a full Revenge for them, by that of the hated Bellamant.---------THE much expected Hour being at length arriv’d, as he was going out to prosecute his Intentions, he bethought himself, that if it should be his fortune to fall by the Sword of his Antagonist, he should not die in peace, losing the opportunity of complaining to Alinda of the Cruelty and Injustice, wherewith he thought himself treated by her.-------To that end, therefore, he turn’d back into his Chamber, and writ to her in this manner. To the Cruel ALINDA. THO there needs no other Weapon than your Scorn to send me from the World, I go to receive a Pass-port from the Hand of my too happy Rival----------In War, as in Love, he will have all manner of Advantages over me.----------Enliven’d with the transporting Assurances you have given him of rewarded Tenderness, your Favour, like a guardian Angel, will hover round his Heart, and shield it from my enervate Rage-------------------whilst I, press’d down by my Despair, can only prove I merited not by Cowardice the Fate I have met----------Perhaps, before Noon, you will hear the unhappy Ellmour is no more.----------I will not ask your Pity for my Misfortunes; for had you ever thought me worthy of it, you would not with study’d Cruelty have inflicted them.----------You would not, O! too unjust Alinda! so often, by a seeming Kindness, have rais’d me to the highest Hopes, only to make my Fall the more terrible to be borne.----------If Bellamant appear’d more deserving in your Eyes, my Constancy, and Ardency of Affection merited, at least, to have been fairly dealt with.----------I blame you not for preferring him, tho a Bankrupt in every thing but your Tenderness; but the Deceit with which you have so long beguiled my too believing Soul, is what I do not think you can, on cool Reflection, ever forgive yourself:-------But I shall insist no farther on your Fault, or my Misfortune; I wish you never may have cause to repent it: for believe, your Happiness is the first in the Desires of him, who, living, or dying, can never be but Yours, ellmour.

154

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

P. S. This moment carries me to my triumphant Rival: if the Justice of my Cause should weigh down the good Fortune of his, and by my Sword he falls, condemn only your own Mismanagement, which interests Heaven on the side of the injur’d Ellmour. THE Surprize and Vexation Alinda was in at the receipt of this Letter, is not to be express’d: She ran immediately to Euphemia’s Chamber, and giving it to her to read, made her an equal Sharer in the same Astonishment and Fright.--------------------Alinda, who had really a great regard for Ellmour, was sensibly touch’d both at his Despair, and the Apprehensions of what it drove him to: But Euphemia, whose very Soul was in Bellamant, was like one distracted. SOME Moments were wasted in fruitless Exclamations: but Alinda, whose Thoughts were more calm, reminded her they had no time to lose; that while they were venting unavailing Complaints, both their Lovers might perish by the mistaken Fury of each other.---------THE Person, therefore, who was sent to discharge Bellamant from Prison, happening to be in the House, he was immediately dispatch’d, with a strict Charge to get as many of his Friends as he could conveniently call on without loss of time, and go with them to the Street where Bellamant liv’d, and watch his coming forth. THE Fellow obey’d the Orders he had given him with all imaginable Diligence; and having procur’d four or five of his Acquaintance, stood at a little distance from the House, but near enough to observe all that pass’d.---------They saw the Rivals meet, perceiv’d they talk’d together, and follow’d them to the Place agreed on to decide the Controversy; taking the advantage of a Row of Trees, which serv’d them as a Skreen from the notice of those they follow’d, still keeping on the contrary side till they found their Presence needful; then, all at once, rush’d out upon them, in the manner already represented.48 SCARCE did the imagin’d Disappointment of his Love give the enrag’d Ellmour more Vexation, than this of his intended Vengeance: Despair had made him so regardless of all other Considerations, that he matter’d not what became of himself, if he might but reach the Life of him who, he believ’d, had ruin’d him with Alinda; and the Persons who gave this seasonable Interruption, were oblig’d to keep him by force from flying on 48 Robert Shoemaker documents historical examples of such collective interventions to prevent duels, and interprets them in the context of social movements against dueling, including two Spectator essays (June 1711) by Sir Richard Steele, to whom The Surprize is dedicated (537–40).

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 155 

Bellamant.-------Having parted them with much difficulty, some of them in a manner forc’d Ellmour to leave the Place, while the rest attended Bellamant home to his Lodging. IT was not till after Ellmour was entirely out of sight, that the Person who had manag’d this Affair appear’d, being order’d to the contrary by the Ladies, not doubting but if he were seen by that Gentleman, it would very much encrease his Fury: but as soon as he came to his Lodgings, he set himself to perform the other Part of his Task, which was given him before there seem’d any Cause for employing him in this, and was the reason for which he was sent for by Alinda. IT was to tell Bellamant, that he was oblig’d, for his Relief, to a Lady, who had seen him but by chance, and had never spoke to him; but, charm’d with the Beauties of his Person, had endeavour’d to make an enquiry into his Circumstances, and by that means came to be told how unfortunate they were. THIS threw Bellamant again into his former Perplexity; he was almost convinc’d by the Words and Behaviour of Ellmour, that it was to Alinda he had ow’d that Obligation, and had been brought to believe, that it was only to make tryal of his Faith, or some other Whim, that had induc’d her to write to him in the manner she had done; nor could he yet assure himself it was not so, till putting the Matter home to this Intelligencer, and repeating to him what Ellmour had told him, and the occasion of his Resentment to him, the other assur’d him by many Oaths, as he very truly might, that it was to a Woman vastly different in Form, Humour, and Fortune from Alinda, that he was indebted for the late Favour he had receiv’d. ALINDA, said he, is vastly tall, the other is of a middle Stature: Alinda has, indeed, a Fortune which might enable her to have confer’d this Obligation on you, had she been so dispos’d; but the other has an Estate more than three times as much. He then proceeded to inform him for what reason the Jealousy of Ellmour had been alarm’d, acknowledging he frequently had done Business for Alinda, but that he was also employ’d by many other Ladies beside her. BUT, continu’d he, I need give myself no farther trouble to confute this mistaken Opinion; the Lady to whom you are so much oblig’d, is desirous of receiving your Thanks this Evening in St. James’s-Park;49 the most 49 St James’s was a highly fashionable park in eighteenth-century London, surrounded by palaces and elegant residences. The park is bordered by Westminster (then a palace, now the Houses of Parliament), St James Palace, and Buckingham Palace. Meetings might take place on the Mall, or in smaller, more private walks. Rosamond’s Pond was a large pool located close to Buckingham Palace, but it had disappeared by 1770.

156

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

unfrequented Walk in it being that by Rosamond’s Pond, you will find her there. She designs to come mask’d,50 but the sign shall be a white Handkerchief in her Hand; which, as you come near, she will let fall, to give you an occasion of taking it up, and accosting her.----------I doubt not but when you meet, you will be more effectually convinc’d, than all I can say will have the power to make you. ’TIS easy to believe Bellamant receiv’d the Assurance of an Eclaircissement of so mysterious an Adventure with no small Satisfaction; and begging pardon for insisting so much on the Truth of what the mistaken Jealousy of Ellmour had suggested to him, assur’d his Informer, he would not fail to be at the Place at the time appointed; and entreated also, that if he acquainted the Lady with his Unbelief, he would also make her sensible of the seeming Reasons he had for it: which the other faithfully promising, took leave. NEVER did the Hours move so heavily away, as those of Bellamant’s did, till the obliging Dial told him it was Six--------------------Then, with the Wings of impatient Curiosity, which are sometimes, in both Sexes, more swift than those of Love, he flew to the Rendevouz; and had not been there above a Minute or two, before the punctual Lady appear’d; The Signal being given, he took it up, and with an Air, which at once express’d Gallantry and Humility, presenting it to her; Madam (said he) how fortunate am I to do you this little Service! which, if no ill Planet intervenes to thwart my more benignant ones,51 may be an Introduction to some of greater Consequence. BELLAMANT (answer’d she) is so accustom’d to say fine things, that I wonder not he has them at command for a Woman, who, ’tis probable, he may believe expects them from him. I am much mistaken, Madam (resum’d he) if the divine Person I am now talking to, has not a right to expect every thing from Bellamant.----------It is to your Goodness, I owe much more than my Life; but as I have nothing else to offer, I beg you

50 To keep her identity private unless she chooses to reveal it, thus protecting her reputation. The handkerchief ruse is to the same effect: to make their conversation appear accidental and incidental to others, rather than a potentially salacious planned assignation. 51 Astrology had a particular vogue early in the eighteenth century, as evidenced by Jonathan Swift’s famous prank in which, as Issac Bickerstaff, Swift predicted in print the date and time of the death of John Partridge, a famed astrologer. While Partridge did not die at the appointed time on 29 March 1708 multiple reports asserted that he had, several of them published on 1 April. By the 1720s the fashion had fallen off, but the language of astrology continued to represent luck or good fortune.

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 157 

will dispose of that.----------If I should be of a humour to take you at your word (interrupted she hastily) I am afraid you would very much repent your Complaisance. Far from it (rejoin’d he;) nor is it more than Justice for me to offer you what is your own. Your Goodness has redeem’d me from a worse than Turkish Slavery, and I am now your Property, part of your Fortune, to be disposed of as you shall think most fit.----------Haste then (continued he, with a low Bow) my charming Mistress, to employ my Zeal; you shall not find a Task so difficult I would not be proud to obey. Suppose (replied the Lady) I should enjoin you one, the offices of which would be as lasting as your Life?----------With what Zeal, with what Pleasure, would you obey a Command so rigorous?----------But to set Raillery apart (continued she, in a more serious Accent) could you, on my Recommendation, venture to marry a Woman whom you have never seen, and have no other Security than my Word, that she is not disagreeable, old, ill-natur’d, vain, proud, and has all the Ill-qualities that can render a Person of our Sex odious to yours! If she has half your Goodness (cried he, in a seeming Rapture) it will be sufficient Compensation for the want of all other Charms: And I cannot believe that you, so eminently stored with it yourself, and from whom I have receiv’d such unmerited Favours, would impose any thing on me, which would not be an Addition to the Happiness you have already confer’d. Well then (resum’d she) I will not keep you long in Suspence, be at your Lodging to-morrow about this Hour, and I will send a Messenger, who shall conduct you to the Lady I have made choice of for you.-------In the mean time, if you would preserve the good Opinion I have of you, endeavour not at an Enquiry, which would be unavailing to you, and entirely disoblige me; which Bellamant having assur’d her he would not do, she took her Leave. I believe I may spare myself the pains of telling my Reader, that this Lady was no other than Euphemia, who, burning with Impatience to see her dear Bellamant (now half restor’d to her former good Opinion) had taken these measures: Neither have I occasion to endeavour at a Representation of those Emotions both felt in expectation of what the appointed Hour should bring forth; which being arrived, the Messenger, who had all along been employ’d in the Management of this Business, and who had acquitted himself so well in the Trust reposed in him, came to the Lodgings of Bellamant, to perform the last part of it; and finding him ready, conducted him to a very large and magnificently furnish’d House.----------Several Footmen, in rich Liveries, attended in the Hall; and every thing had the Appearance rather of the Palace of a Dutchess, than the Apartment of a private Gentlewoman. After having shown him up

158

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

stairs into a fine Dining-Room, he took his Leave, telling him the Lady of the Dwelling would wait on him immediately. BELLAMANT had scarce time to think whether the Owner of this stately House were the Lady to whom he ow’d his Liberty, or that which he had promis’d to resign it to, or if they were not both one, when he perceiv’d the Lady who he had entertain’d in the Park, come toward him: She was mask’d, as before, but by her Air and Stature, he knew her to be the same. I will not go about to apologize (said she) for concealing my Face; I have Reasons for it, which, when you are acquainted with, I know you will forgive.----------In the mean time, I entreat you will be seated, for I have that to say, which will require your utmost Attention.-------You must therefore lay aside all your accustom’d Gallantry and Complaisance, and answer to the Demand I have to make you, with the same Sincerity as you would Heaven, at your latest Hour. SHE pronounc’d these Words in an Accent so very grave, as gave a sensible Alarm to the Person they were address’d to: but it was infinitely increas’d, when after he had bound himself by Oath to conceal nothing she desir’d to know,-------I cannot doubt (said she) but you are sufficiently acquainted with the World, to be assur’d, such Actions as you have found from me, proceed only from Love.----------You are certainly convinc’d, that to make your Happiness, is the way to compleat my own: but the uncommon Means I am about to offer, will, perhaps, oblige you to confess my Passion elevated to a height you before had not the least Notion of.-------Your Compliance to espouse a Woman you had never seen, I take as the effect of Gratitude, and am well pleas’d to find that good Quality in the Man I love: but to prove with what a disinterested Affection I regard you, I this moment discharge you from the Promise I yesterday exacted from you, and will not be oblig’d, for a return of Love, to any Motive but Love; which since impossible you should feel for a Woman, to whose Face and Humour you are utterly a Stranger, I beg to know if you are entirely free from Prepossession, and at liberty to receive the Impression I would wish to inspire. Here she ceas’d, and Bellamant, all Confusion and Amazement, had not immediately the power of replying, any otherwise than by a deep Sigh; which giving her some reason to imagine she had touch’d him in the tenderest part: I am afraid (resumed she) that I have ask’d a Question you have too much Complaisance to answer with the Sincerity I wish. BUT to convince you that nothing can oblige me so much as Truth, I solemnly protest, by the power whom we adore, by all things sacred

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 159 

above, or dear below, I will not only relinquish all that power your Gratitude has given me over your Affections; but, to the utmost of my power, endeavour to forward the Reward of them, with that happier Woman, whom your Judgment or Inclination prefers to the rest of her Sex. I have been told (continued she, perceiving he was yet silent) that of late you have made your Addresses to a very fine Lady, I think they call her Alinda. AH, Madam! (interrupted he, with a visible Disorder in his Face) would to God all that labour in the Pangs of hopeless Love, felt no more than I was ever capable of knowing for that Lady. Then it is to some other (cried she hastily) that you are indebted for your Sensibility of the tender Passion? THESE Words seem’d to plunge Bellamant into greater Confusion than before; a burning Blush spread itself all o’er his Face, and his whole Frame seem’d to tremble with convulsive Agonies. SPEAK, (said the Lady, no less disorder’d, tho’ for far different Reasons) by the Perturbations which you, in vain, endeavour to conceal, I am sufficiently convinc’d that you have lov’d.--------------------That you do love with an unvanquishable Passion, and which your Gratitude; and, perhaps, the Interest you may imagine to yourself in flattering my Wishes, has hitherto prevented you from revealing.----------But I conjure you, by the Oath you have taken to resolve me in whatever I ask’d, to let me know the Truth of this Affair; and by that myself has sworn, again assure you, that nothing you can do will so much oblige me.-------Tell me then the Truth, without Disguise. SHE spoke these last Words with such an Emphasis, as shew’d she was infinitely concern’d in his Reply; and sure never Man suffer’d more in an Uncertainty what was best for him to do, than he did in this Moment: but being of a Temper naturally open and sincere, however some Circumstances of Life had obliged him sometimes to disguise the Truth; and being adjur’d to it now with so pressing an Earnestness, he resolved to obey her, whatever should be the Event. SINCE you command me, Madam (said he) by Adjurations too powerful to be refused, I must no longer conceal what, perhaps, the Knowledge of, will add to the Perplexity I see you are already involv’d in.----------I cannot deny, Madam, but I have lov’d----------that I do love----------but at the same time assure you, that ’tis a hopeless Flame; for tho’ bless’d far beyond my Merits, with the Affection of my Charmer, my cruel Fortune has laid an indissoluble Bar between us, and curses me, in an eternal Absence.----------All I have to wish, is, that she may be enabled to forget me, as I have long, tho’ vainly endeavour’d, to do her.

160

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

’TIS generously confess’d (cried the Lady, in a faint Voice;) and since you have gone thus far, think me not unworthy of the remaining part of the Secret.--------------------What could happen to separate Hearts by mutual Tenderness united? THE Malevolence of ill Fate (reply’d he.) My unhappy Circumstances requir’d a Wife’s Fortune to retrieve; which, at my first Acquaintance with her, who soon became the Mistress of my Soul, I imagin’d she was in possession of.----------But too late, alas! I found the contrary, and that her Parents had been able to leave her no more than a thousand Pounds, which was a Trifle to what my Wants requir’d.----------Living with an Aunt who was vastly rich, I had hope, since she allow’d of my Pretensions, she would considerably add to her Fortune: but I was deceiv’d, she offer’d no more than to double what was left her, and that was ineffectual to have redeem’d my Mortgage, without which both must have been wretched.-------The extreme Passion I had for her, render’d it impossible for me to wish to make her a Partner in my Misfortunes. I resolv’d to bear my Load of Woe alone, with this additional one, of being for ever separated from all I lov’d on Earth:----------But, asham’d of declaring the Truth, yet bent to obey the Dictates of Generosity, I shew’d an Act of Self-denial, which there are but few Parallels of; and when every thing was preparing to make me the happiest of Mankind, tore myself away from all I lov’d----------from all I ever can love with that Ardency of Affection! and to leave her untouch’d with my Calamity, entail’d an endless Curse upon myself. I have but one thing more to ask, said the Lady; Is the Name of her you lov’d a Secret I must not know? Nothing, Madam, answer’d he, must be deny’d to your forgiving Goodness: She was call’d Euphemia, born in Wiltshire, and of a Parentage far above her Fortune. But to go about to describe the thousand Charms, the thousand Graces which shone about her Form, inspir’d her Conversation, and render’d her Temper the sweetest and most obliging in the world, were a Task as impossible to perform, as it would be imprudent to attempt. YOU shall not need--------------------cry’d the Lady, (throwing off her Mask, and discovering herself to be the Person he spoke of) you shall not need, my dearest Bellamant! it is no matter what the Person of Euphemia is;52 her Fate, I am sure, is glorious in this discover’d Constancy of the charming Bellamant.

52 i.e., what she looks like, in or out of disguise.

The Surprize; or Constancy Rewarded

 161 

WITH these Words she threw herself into his Arms, who, with the strong Surprize! the sudden Rush of overwhelming Extasy, was for some Moments quite uncapable of Speech, or Motion.----------But when recover’d enough to do it, how many Efforts did he make to utter what he felt? In vain, alas! for ’twas unspeakable; but what Language wanted Words to express, Embraces, Kisses, rapturous Graspings, and all the Excess of fond endearing Passion very well supply’d.---------THE first wild Tumults of their mutual Transport being a little over, Alinda, who had been conceal’d in the next Room to observe what pass’d, came in to wish them Joy; and, at their leisure, every Particular of this Transaction was related.---------IN a few days their Marriage was solemniz’d with a Magnificence suitable to the Tenderness they had for each other.---------ELLMOUR, of all the Persons concern’d in the Affair, was the only distressed Person; who, being inform’d of what had happen’d, and convinc’d of his Mistake, despair’d of ever being able to obtain a Pardon from Alinda, for the Rashness of his ungovern’d Jealousy.---------BUT Bellamant and Euphemia, too well convinc’d by Experience what a Heart truly touch’d with Love must feel in the resentment of the belov’d Object, pleaded so successfully in his behalf, that he was again receiv’d into favour; and, in a few Weeks after the Celebration of their own Marriage, were invited to that of his with his adorable Alinda.---------THUS was Constancy on all sides Rewarded; and by the continu’d Tenderness they had for each other after Marriage, gave a Proof, that Possession does not always extinguish Desire, and surpriz’d the World with an Example, which I am afraid more will Admire than Imitate.

F I N I S.

Appendix A Contemporary Comments on Eliza Haywood

Contemporary Commentaries on Haywood Published with Her Works In addition to the critical representations of Haywood in Alexander Pope’s Dunciad and Henry Fielding’s The Author’s Farce (see introduction, pages 9–12), there were a handful of other impressions of and opinions about Haywood published in the 1720s. The first four pieces collected here were reprinted in all three editions of Secret Histories, the four-volume collection of Haywood’s works, the first of which appeared in 1725.

“To Mrs. Eliza Haywood on her Writings.” – James Sterling IF but thro’ finer Organs, Souls shine forth, And polish’d Matter marks the mental Worth; Sure Spirit free, by no dull Mass controul’d, Exerts full Vigour in fair Female Mold— Let Tyrant Man, with salic Laws, submit, Nor boast the vain Prerogative of Wit: See! from ELIZA in a Flood of Day With vast Effulgence streams the pow’rful Ray! But Nature, in an Elegance of Care, At once creates our Wonder and our Fear;

Contemporary Comments on Eliza Haywood So delicate’s the Texture of her Brain, We wish it less refin’d, and nearer Man; For weak’s the Clock with over-curious Springs, And frail the Voice that too divinely sings – See! Handmaid-Nature guides her godlike Fires, Each Grace adorns what ev’ry Muse inspires; The charming Page pale Envy’s Gloom beguiles, She low’rs, she reads, forgets herself and smiles: Proportion’d to the Image, Language swells, Both leave the Mind suspended, which excels ---------Great Arbitress of Passion! (wond’rous Art!) As the despotick Will the Limbs, thou mov’st the Heart; Persuasion waits on all your bright Designs, And where you point the varying Soul inclines: See! Love and Friendship, the fair Theme inspires We glow with Zeal, we melt in soft Desires! Thro’ the dire Labyrinth of Ills we share The kindred Sorrows of the gen’rous Pair; ’Till, pleas’d, rewarded Vertue we behold, Shine from the Furnace pure as tortur’d Gold: You sit like Heav’n’s bright Minister on High, Command the throbbing Breast, and watry Eye, And, as our captive Spirits ebb and flow, Smile at the Tempests you have rais’d below: The face of Guilt a Flush of Vertue wears, And sudden burst th’ involuntary Tears: Honour’s sworn Foe, the Libertine with Shame, Descends to curse the sordid lawless Flame; The tender Maid here learns Man’s various Wiles, Rash Youth, hence dread the Wanton’s venal Smiles – Sure ’twas by brutal Force of envious Man, First Learning’s base Monopoly began; He knew your Genius, and refus’d his Books, Nor thought your Wit less fatal than your Looks. Read, proud Usurper, read with conscious Shame, Pathetick Behn, or Manley’s greater Name; Forget their Sex, and own when Haywood writ, She clos’d the fair Triumvirate of Wit; Born to delight as to reform the Age,

 163 

164

Appendix A She paints Example thro’ the shining Page; Satiric Precept warms the moral Tale, And Causticks burn where the mild Balsam fails; A Task reserv’d for her, to whom ’tis given, To stand the Proxy of vindictive Heav’n!

“To Mrs. Eliza Haywood, on her Novel, Call’d Love in Excess, &c.” – Richard Savage FAIN wou’d I here my vast Ideas raise, To point the Wonders of Eliza’s Praise; But like young Artists, where their Stroaks decay, I shade those Glories, which I can’t display. Thy Prose in sweeter Harmony refines, Than Numbers flowing thro’ the Muse’s Lines; What Beauty ne’er cou’d melt, thy Touches fire, And raise a Musick that can Love inspire; Sound! Soul-thrilling Accents all our Senses wound, And strike with Softness, whilst they charm with When thy Count pleads, what Fair his Suit can fly? Or when thy Nymph laments, what Eyes are dry? Ev’n Nature’s self in Sympathy appears, Yields Sigh for Sigh, and melts in equal Tears; For such Description thus at once can prove The Force of Language, and the Sweets of Love. The Myrtle’s Leaves with those of Fame entwine, And all the Glories of the Wreath are thine? As Eagles can undazzl’d view the Force Of scorching Phœbus in his Noon-day Course; Thy Genius to the God its Lustre plays, Meets his fierce Beams, and darts him Rays for Rays! Oh glorious Strength! Let each succeeding Page Still boast those Charms, and luminate the Age; So shall thy beamful Fires with Light divine Rise to the Sphere, and there triumphant shine.

Contemporary Comments on Eliza Haywood

 165 

“To the most Ingenious Mrs. Haywood, on her Novel, entitled, Love in Excess.” – By an unknown HAND1 A Stranger Muse, an Unbeliever too, That Womens Souls such Strength of Vigour knew! Nor less an Atheist to Love’s Power declar’d, Till YOU a Champion for the Sex appear’d! A Convert now, to both, I feel that Fire YOUR Words alone can paint! YOUR Looks inspire! Resistless now, Love’s Shafts new pointed fly, Wing’d with YOUR Flame, and blazing in YOUR Eye, With sweet, but powerful Force, the Charm-shot Heart Receives th’ Impression of the Conqu’ring Dart, And ev’ry Art’ry huggs the Joy-tipt Smart! No more of Phœbus rising vainly boast, Ye tawny Sons of a luxurious Coast! While our bless’d Isle is with such Rays replete, Britain shall glow with more than Eastern Heat!

“Verses wrote in the Blank Leaf of Mrs. Haywood’s Novel.” – Anonymous OF all the Passions given us from Above, The noblest, truest, and the best, is Love; ’Tis Love awakes the Soul, informs the Mind, And bends the stubborn Temper to be kind, Abates the Edge of ev’ry poi’nant Care Succeeds the Wishes of the trembling Fair, And ravishes the Lover from Despair.

1 The header to the poem as printed in Secret Histories is “By an unknown Hand. To the most Ingenious …”

166

Appendix A ’Tis Love Eliza’s soft Affection fires, Eliza writes, but Love alone inspires; ’Tis Love, that gives D’Elmont his manly Charms, And tears Amena from her Father’s Arms; Relieves the Fair One from her Maiden Fear, And gives Melliora all her Soul holds dear, A generous Lover, and a Bliss sincere. Receive, my Fair, the Story, and approve, The Cause of Honour, and the Cause of Love; With kind Concern, the tender Page peruse, And all the Infant Labours of the Muse. So never may those Eyes forget to shine, And bright Melliora’s Fortune be as Thine; On thy best Looks, an happy D’Elmont feed, And all the Wishes of thy Soul succeed.

Contemporary Commentaries on Haywood from Other Sources Not surprisingly, the comments that Haywood’s publishers did not choose to reprint offer a wider range of opinion. There is no documented critical response to The Masqueraders specifically, so this collection includes commentary on Haywood published into the early 1730s, encompassing commentary on several of her novels of the 1720s. “To Mrs. Eliza Haywood, on her Novel, Call’d the Rash Resolve.”2 – Richard Savage, 1724 DOOM’D to a Fate, which damps the Poet’s Flame, A Muse, unfriended, greets thy rising Name! Unvers’d in Envy’s, or in Flatt’ry’s Phrase, Greatness she flies, yet Merit claims her Praise; Nor will she, at her with’ring Wreath, repine, 2 Printed in the front matter of Haywood’s novel The Rash Resolve.

Contemporary Comments on Eliza Haywood But smile, if Fame, and Fortune cherish thine. THE Sister Sciences thy Genius warm, And, with their Strength, thy Sex’s Softness arm. In thy full Figures, Painting’s Force we find, As Music charms, thy Language lifts the Mind. Thy Pow’r gives Form, and touches into Life The Passions imag’d in their bleeding Strife: Contrasted Strokes, true Art, and Fancy, show, And Lights, and Shades, in lively mixture flow. Thus Fear flies Hope, large Reason Love’s Controul, Jealousy wounds and Friendship heals the Soul: Black Falshood wears bright Gallantry’s Disguise, And the gilt Cloud enchants the Fair One’s Eyes. Thy Dames, in Grief, and Frailties, lovely shine, And when most mortal, half appear divine. If, when some Godlike, fav’rite Passion sways, The willing Heart too fatally obeys, Great Minds lament, what cruel Censure blames, And ruin’d Virtue gen’rous Pity claims. ELIZA, still impaint Love’s pow’rful Queen! Let Love, soft Love! adorn each swelling Scene. Arm’d with keen Wit, in Fame’s wide Lists advance! Spain yields in Fiction, in Politeness, France. Such Orient Light, as the first Poets knew, Flames from thy Thought, and brightens ev’ry View! A strong, a glorious, a luxuriant Fire, Which warms cold Wisdom into wild Desire! Thy Fable glows so rich thro’ ev’ry Page, What Moral’s Force can the fierce Heat assuage? AND yet,—but say, if ever doom’d to prove The sad, the dear Perplexities of Love! Where seeming Transport softens ev’ry Pain, Where fancy’d Freedom waits the winning Chain! Vary’ng from Pangs to visionary Joys, Sweet is the Fate, and charms, as it destroys! Say then,—if Love to sudden Rage, gives way, Will the soft passion not resume its Sway?

 167 

168

Appendix A Charming, and charm’d, can Love from Love retire? Can a cold Convent quench th’ unwilling Fire? Precept, if human, may our Thoughts refine, More, we admire! but cannot prove divine.

The Authors of the Town; A Satire (excerpt)3 – Richard Savage, 1725 A cast-off Dame, who of Intrigues can judge, Writes Scandal in Romance—A Printer’s Drudge! Flush’d with Success, for Stage-Renown she pants, And melts, and swells, and pens luxurious Rants. But while her Muse a sulph’rous Flame displays, Glows strong with Lust, or burns with Envy’s Blaze! While some black Fiend, that hugs the haggard Shrew, Hangs his collected Horrors on her Brow! Clio, descending Angels sweep thy Lyre, Prompt thy soft Lays, and breathe Seraphic fire. Tears fall, Sighs rise, obedient to thy Strains, And the Blood dances in the mazy Veins! … (157–68)

The Ladies Journal, Thursday 16 February 1727 – Anonymous (signed “Love More”)

To the Author of the Ladies Journal SIR, I Am one of that infinite Number, who wait impatiently for the return of every Thursday, finding that to be the Day on which you have chose

3 Though the poem is dismissive of Haywood, it was published by J. Roberts, who also printed both The Masqueraders and The Surprize, as well as several of Haywood’s other early novels.

Contemporary Comments on Eliza Haywood

 169 

to Publish your Ingenious and agreeably Instructive Paper; in the perusal whereof I confess to have reap’d a great deal of Pleasure. Sir, I entirely concur with you, in your Opinion of the Excellence of the Fair Sex above ours, nor is it a small addition to their Praise, that the most famous Warriours and greatest Conquerors have been their most Eminent Admirers; an Infinite Number of Instances might be brought to confirm the truth of this Assertion. I shall at present only mention one, our great Edward the third is no less famous for his Military Atchievements than his Devotion to the Ladies, and in particular to the celebrated Countess of Salisbury, to whom we owe the Institution of the most Noble Order in the World, on which perhaps I may hereafter enlarge, if you think the following Lines worth Publishing. Writ on a blank Leaf of a Lady’s Love in Excess. INgenious Haywood Writes like one who knew The Pangs of Love and all it’s raptures too; O cou’d I boast that more than common Skill, Which guides her Fancy and directs her Quill; When she so lively to her Reader shows, A tender Heart oppress’d with Amorous Woes; My Passion I so clearly wou’d display, And to your view my Soul so open lay, Describe in Words well chose and apt to move, The Agonizing Torments of my Love: The Thousand Wrecking Sighs that rend my Breast, And Pangs of Jealousy, that Foe to rest; With all the Train of Ills which constant wait, On the Distress’d Dispairing Lover’s Fate. That you, Unkind and Cruel shou’d confess. Count Delmont never Lov’d to such Excess. Love makes many Pœtasters, one of whom is Sir, Your Humble Servant, Love More

Appendix B Documents from the Masquerade Debate

Weekly Journal 15 Feb 1718 In its accounts of events about town, The Weekly Journal provided a detailed description of an early Heidegger masquerade: The Room is exceeding large, beautifully adorn’d, and illuminated with 500 Wax Lights; on the Sides are divers Beauffetts, over which is written the several Wines therin contain’d, as Canary, Burgundy, Champaign, Rhenish, &c. each most excellent in its kind; of which all are at Liberty to drink what they please, with large Services of all Sorts of Sweetmeats. There are also two Setts of Musick, at due Distance from each other, perform’d by very good Hands. By the vast Variety of Dresses (many of them very rich) you would fancy it a Congress of the principal Persons of all the World, as Turks, Italians, Indians, Polanders, Spaniards, Venetians, &c. There is an absolute Freedom of Speech, without the least Offence given thereby; which all appear better bred than to offer at any Thing prophane, rude, or immodest; but Wit incessantly flashes about in Repartee, Honour, and good Humour, and all kinds of Pleasantry. There was also the Groom Porter’s Office, where all play that please, while Heaps of Guineas pass about, with so little Concern in the Loosers, that they are not to be distinguished from the Winners. Nor does it add a little to the Beauty of the Entertainment, to see the Generality of the Masqueraders behave themselves agreeable to their several Habits. The Number when I was there on Tuesday, last week, was computed at 700, with some Files of Musquetiers at Hand, for the preventing any Disturbance might happen by Quarrels, &c. so frequent in Venice, Italy, and other Countries, on such Entertainments. At Eleven o’Clock, a Person gives Notice that Supper is ready, when the

Documents from the Masquerade Debate

 171 

Company pass up into another large Room, where a noble cold Entertainment is prepared, suitable to all the rest; the whole Diversion continuing from Nine o’Clock till Seven next Morning. In short, the whole Ball was sufficiently illustrious in every Article of it, for the greatest Prince to give on the most extraordinary Occasion.

“Sermon Preached to the Societies for the Reformation of Manners” (excerpt)4 – Edmund Gibson, Lord Bishop of London [Masquerades and costumes] deprive Virtue and Religion of their last Refuge, I mean Shame, which keeps Multitudes of Sinners within the Bounds of Decency, after they have broken thro’ all the Ties of Principle and Conscience. But this Invention sets them free from that Tie also, being neither better nor worse than an Opportunity to say and do there what Virtue, Decency, and Good-Manners will not permit to be said or done in any other Place. If Persons of either Sex will frequent lewd and profane Plays, or openly join themselves to loose and atheistical Assemblies of any kind, they have their Reward; they are sure to be mark’d and branded by all good Men as Persons of corrupt Minds, and vicious Inclinations, who have abandon’d Religion, and all Pretensions to it, and given themselves over to Luxury and Profaneness. And as bad as the World is, this is a very heavy Load upon the Characters of Men; and, in spite of all the Endeavours of Vice to bear up and keep it self in Countenance, it sinks them by Degrees into Infamy and Contempt. But this pernicious Invention intrenches Vice and Profaneness against all the Assaults and Impressions of Shame; and whatever Lewdness may be concerted, whatever Luxury, Immodesty, or Extravagance may be committed in word or Deed, no one’s Reputation is at stake, no one’s Character is responsible for it: A Circumstance of such terrible Consequence to Virtue and Good Manners, that if Masquerades shall ever be reviv’d, as we heartily hope they will not, all serious Christians within these two great and populous Cities will be nearly concern’d to lay it to Heart, and diligently to bestir themselves in cautioning their Friends and Neighbours against such fatal Snares: Particularly, all who have the Government and Education of Youth, ought to take the greatest 4 From the version reprinted in An Essay on Plays and Masquerades (1724).

172

Appendix B

Care to keep them out of the way of this dangerous Temptation. And then to labour against the spreading of it, considering the Proneness of Mankind to fall into the Diversions and manners of those who are of a superior Rank and Character. I cannot forbear to add, That, all religious Considerations apart, this is a Diversion that no true Englishman ought to be fond of, when he remembers that it was brought among us by the Ambassador of a neighbouring Nation in the last Reign, while his Master was in Measures to enslave us. And indeed there is not a more effectual way to enslave a People than first to dispirit and enfeeble them by Licentiousness and effeminacy.

The Ball. Stated in a Dialogue betwixt a Prude and a Coquet. Last Masquerade Night, the 12th of May.5 (1724) – Anonymous Enter HILARIA, a Coquet, dress’d for the Masquerade, to LUCRETIA, a Prude, at her Tea-Table. lucr.

O JESU! — Coz — why this fantastick Dress? I fear some Frenzy does your Head possess; That thus you sweep along a Turkish Tail, And let that Robe o’er Modesty prevail.

hilar.

Dear Madam! — why this Wonder, and that To Night Count H---gg—r does give a Ball:  If of a Habit you seem thus afraid, How will you venture to the Masquerade?

(Squall?

5 Published by J. Roberts, the same printer who published The Masqueraders and The Surprize, the title page includes the following quotation from Dryden’s translation of Juvenal’s 6th and 11th satires: Where sprightly Females, to the Middle bare, Trip lightly o’er the Ground, and frisk in Air; Whose pliant Limbs in various Postures move,    And twine, and bound, as in the Rage of Love: Where the rank Matrons, dancing to the Pipe, Jig with their Bums, and are for Action ripe; Full Brimmers to their suddel’d Noses thrust, Brimmers, the last Provocatives of Lust.

Documents from the Masquerade Debate Who? — me? — O Heaven! how shall I make When, at the Thought alone, I swoon—I die:  My Blood impetuous to my Face does flush, And dyes my Features with a Crimson Blush; To my whole Frame Disorders does impart; Qualms and Convulsions seize my Nerves and Heart: Far from my Ears that odious Word convey, Or else my Winding-sheet with haste display; In ev’ry filthy Syllable I find Rapes, Satyrs, Bulls, and Goats, to shock my Mind.

 173 

lucr.

hilar.

Prodigious this imaginary Fear! If that the Thing itself you cannot bear, The Word is innocent, — that you may safely hear.

lucr.

The Thing! — and Innocence! — how you unite A Fiend of Darkness with a Child of Light; To what a Height of Confidence we’re grown, When thus the Thing itself we bare-fac’d own; O! — let not these Delusions thus prevail, Or at the Devil’s Market set your self to sale.

hilar.

How grave you are! — I’ll take you tho’ to task, Unless at Home you lay aside your Mask; For none wou’d wear in jest that serious Face, But to enjoy Life’s Sweets with better Grace.

lucr.

Cousin, explain; —I know not what you mean By hinting; — as I were not, what I seem; My Heart’s chaste Thoughts my Tongue has ever spoke, Nor have I any Secrets want a Cloak.

hilar. 6

Ben’t angry then; — but tete a tete let’s hear What crime does in the Masquerade appear. O Goddess, Prudence! — whither art thou flown, From this vile Age, and most abandon’d Town; Thy Sister Virtue too deserts us quite,

lucr.

6 Corrected from Hillar.

(Reply?

174

Appendix B Whilst Clear-Day boasts the Infamy of Night. Why in the naughty Vestment are you seen? Dress’d up for Love, with such an Air and Mien, As if you wou’d commence Sultana-Queen: Instead of flying Faithless Man’s False Arts, You run into their Way of gaining Hearts; At Midnight-Balls no Love you must refuse, And ev’n the Form of Pray’rs and Vows excuse. Quickly then these enchanting Revels shun, Or all my Caution’s vain, and you’re undone.

hilar.

Since Conqu’ring Virtue does my Conduct guard; Of harmless Mirth, why shou’d I be debar’d? Vice I defy! — nor will I stand aloof, But shew myself against Temptation proof.

lucr.

So much of Female Fortitude you boast, You think, your Honour never can be lost; But may find both precarious to your Cost. In Armour thus young Warriors do confide, And think the Metal good, tho’ never try’d: But when the sharpen’d Steel they dare control, A little Dagger makes a — mighty Hole.

hilar.

A groundless Fear! — nor will I be deny’d, What’s gay and innocent with such a Guide; Shall false, presuming Man my thoughts perplex? No! — I was born to plague the silly Sex: Methods there are to match their sharpest Tricks. Their fond Credulity I’ll fret and teize, And sow’r and sweeten ’em just as I please; Now seem to yield, — now fly, —now faintly strive — Drop in their Arms; — then like a Duck I’ll dive. Thus oft deceiv’d, they can no longer doubt, That we’re a Riddle, never yet made out; Lost in a Maze, they’ll cry; — we own indeed, Woman’s a Language Man can never read.

lucr.

You talk this prettily, upon my Word, Some small Remarks my present Thoughts afford;

Documents from the Masquerade Debate Your Similies are charmingly apply’d, But pray observe ’em on the other Side: Your cunning Duck in policy may fail, And as she dives, be snapp’d up by the Tail; E’en Madam Sphynx, (who cou’d dark Riddles plot) Met one, who into her Enigma got: To Man, what Language so mysterious yet? But back—or—forwards he cou’d penetrate. hilar.

I vow all your Remarks are out of Joint, And never touch the most material Point; Suppose that Man to Virtue does lay Siege, He to surrender can’t our Sex oblige; His standing Forces may attack in Form, Sap, Mine, and Batter; — nay proceed to storm: All this we suffer, but to make us Sport, If we keep close, — he cannot gain the Fort; Baffl’d at last, he’s forc’d to a Retreat, Brighter our Glory shines by his Defeat.

lucr.

Your Arguments are Froth, —say what you can; You talk as unexperienc’d in Man: Proud of some small Success, you dare rely Upon your self; — Woman to win must fly, Or at th’ insulting Victor’s Mercy lie. Perhaps of Courage, I may boast my Share, Yet wou’d not wage with Man unequal War; The Fort of Chastity does shew some Strength, It’s Fosse7 too of goodly Depth and Length; But then if Man produces one Great Gun, The Fort’s demolish’d, and our Sex undone; The smallest Breach made in the Cover’d-Way Admits their whole Artillery to play; And if the Vant-Guard once Admittance find, The Rear will not be idle —tho’ behind.

hilar.

Too far into the Depth of War we wade; But what’s this Trifling to the Masquerade?

7 A long narrow hollow or trench.

 175 

176

Appendix B Triumphant there you’ll own our Sex remains, All Mirth and Innocence without Love’s Pains: It is impossible, in such a Place And Company — for Sin to shew it’s Face; So vast the Crowd, so num’rous are the Lights, That if we slip, —how soon we’re put to rights; If I’m attack’d, — I freely jest unknown; And when I please — but Presto — and I’m gone; I Chat, — I Laugh, — I Dance, — with Coquet’s Art, Play over all my Tricks; — yet keep my Heart.

lucr.

How strait and slippery a Path they tread, Who wou’d plant Prudence in a young Girl’s Head; Still on your Strength or Conduct you insist, And, obstinate in Ignorance, persist; You wander in a dark and stormy Night, Yet trust an Ignis-Fatuus for Light; Take me your Guide, and let me set you right.

hilar.

Proceed then, that my Errors I may see; And whilst you moralize —I’ll drink some Tea.

You seem to think the Masquerade a Place, Varnish’d with Modesty, and stuff’d with Grace; From Time, and Place, and Company you bring Strange Arguments to palliate the Thing; Now as I take the Hint — it is allow’d— Odd Matters may be finish’d in a Crowd; Throng’d on all Sides — if mask’d, you’re still alone; Secure and pleas’d they act — who act unknown: Tho’ e’er so armed against the Dart of Sin, If the least Cranny’s found — it will get in.

lucr.

hilar.

How learnedly you talk upon this Head, I vow, my Dear — you’re very deeply read.

lucr.

From Speculation my Experience springs, Not Practice, — but the Theory of Things; Let me reduce to Method what I’ve said,

Documents from the Masquerade Debate And sketch an Ev’ning at the Masquerade; I think I see you into Ruin rush, Forwards (to be undone) you thrust and push; Where odious Fellows taint you with their Breath, And hawl — and pull — and squeeze it just to Death: Each flutt’ring Fop will whisper in your Ear. Such filthy Stuff; O Gad; — and you must hear; If to some private Corner you retire, They follow still, — and swear ’tis your Desire; Crowds of deluding Fiends about you swarm, In all you see, feel, taste, there’s some curs’d Charm, Jelly provokes, — and brisk Champagne does warm: The Musick makes you gay, and Love inspires, Whilst Chat and Motion blow up hidden Fires; Some wanton Youth your tott’ring Virtue Plyes, He hears you sigh — and sees your Bubbies rise; He presses on, — who can her heart command, When Love triumphant at the Door does stand? Tho’ in a Mask, — no Secrets you’ll conceal, Once Love’s prevailing Article you feel; Where are you then? — I hear Temptation call — I see — alas! — how easily you fall—. hil.

How feelingly you speak; — but what you teach, Farther I think than Theory does reach; Such Depth of Knowledge Practice does require, And to improve — I’ll to the Ball retire; Where round that little World I’ll freely roam, As innocent as — Madam here at home; Nor do I Loss of Reputation fear, Tho’ I may meet the gay Philander there; Proof against all his Arts — Good-night, my Dear.

— How! — meet Philander there! — I shall run mad, That is the fatal — only Blow I dread: False and perfidious Man! — so quickly chang’d! — Has he not sworn? — and shan’t I be reveng’d? — I’ll tear her Eyes—his Heart— who waits? —who’s there?

lucr.

Enter BETTY.

 177 

178

Appendix B Get me, my Domine, — and Tom a Chair, Whilst such sage Lectures to her Youth I give, She steals my Man; — who can that Crime forgive? Let them who never felt Love’s pleasing Smart, Preach Patience now; — that Stranger to my Heart: Where’s Prud’ry too? — a formal idle Guest, On whose Foundation Women vainly rest; But Love makes us, — and it — and all the World a Jest. With Vengeance arm’d, Fate’s worst and best I’ll try, Philander lose, — or see Hilaria die.

[Exit. FINIS

Bibliography

Addison, Joseph. “Cato: A Tragedy.” 1713. Ed. Laura J. Rosenthal. The Broadview Anthology of Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century English Drama. Ed. J. Douglas Canfield. Peterborough: Broadview, 2001. 186–216. –  The Spectator. 9 Mar. 1711. Agger, Ben. Cultural Studies as Critical Theory. London: The Falmer Press, 1992. Ahern, Stephen. Affected Sensibilities: Romantic Excess and the Genealogy of the Novel 1680–1810. New York: AMS, 2007. Anderson, Emily Hodgson. “Performing the Passions in Eliza Haywood’s Fantomina and Miss Betsy Thoughtless.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 46.1 (2005): 1–15. Web. JSTOR. 10 June 2013. Austin, Andrea. “Shooting Blanks: Potency, Parody, and Eliza Haywood’s The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless.” Saxton and Bocchicchio 259–82. Backscheider, Paula R. “Haywood, Eliza (1693? –1756).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford UP, 2004. Online edition. 10 June 2013. – Introduction. Selected Fiction and Drama of Eliza Haywood. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. –  “The Paradigms of Popular Culture.” Eighteenth-Century Novel 6–7 (2009): 17–59. –  “The Shadow of an Author: Eliza Haywood.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 11.1 (1998): 79–102. Web. Project Muse. 2 Sept. 2013. –  “The Story of Eliza Haywood’s Novels: Caveats and Questions.” Saxton and Bocchicchio 19–47. Baines, Paul, and Pat Rogers. Curll, Bookseller. Oxford: Clarendon, 2007. Baker, David Erskine. Biographia Dramatica, or, a Companion to the Playhouse. 2 vols. London, 1782. Web. Gale. Eighteenth-Century Collections Online. 10 July 2013.

180

Bibliography

The Ball. Stated in a Dialogue betwixt a Prude and a Coquet, Last Masquerade Night. London: J. Roberts, 1724. Web. Gale. Eighteenth-Century Collections Online. 2 Sept. 2013. Ballaster, Ros. “A Gender of Opposition: Eliza Haywood’s Scandal Fiction.” Saxton and Bocchicchio 143–67. –  Seductive Forms: Women's Amatory Fiction from 1684 to 1740. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. Bertelsen, Lance. “Popular Entertainment and Instruction, Literary and Dramatic: Chapbooks, Advice Books, Almanacs, Ballads, Farces, Pantomimes, Prints and Shows.” Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780. Ed. John Richetti. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012. 61–86. Blouch, Christine. “Eliza Haywood and the Romance of Obscurity.” SEL: Studies in English Literature 31.3 (1991): 535–51. – “Introduction.” The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless. 1751. Ed. Christine Blouch. Peterborough: Broadview, 1998. –  “‘What Ann Lang Read’: Eliza Haywood and Her Readers.” Saxton and Bocchicchio 300–25. Bocchicchio, Rebecca P. “‘Blushing, Trembling, and Incapable of Defense’: The Hysterics of The British Recluse.” Saxton and Bocchicchio 95–114. Bowers, Toni. “Sex, Lies and Invisibility: Amatory Fiction from the Restoration to Mid-Century.” The Columbia History of the British Novel. Ed. John Richetti. New York: Columbia UP, 1994. 50–72. Briggs, Asa, Peter Burke, Jeffrey Richards, Dai Smith, and Stephen Yeo. “What Is the History of Popular Culture?” History Today 35.12 (1985): 39–45. Burke, Peter. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. 3rd ed. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009. Castle, Terry. “Eros and Liberty at the English Masquerade, 1710–90.” EighteenthCentury Studies 17.2 (1983): 157–76. Web. Jstor. 8 July 2013. –  Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century Culture and Fiction. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1986. Cecil, Evelyn. London Parks and Gardens. London: Athena Press, 1907. Centlivre, Suzanne. The Masquerade: A Poem. London, 1713. Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984. Chambers, Robert. The Book of Days: A Miscelleny of Popular Antiquities. London: W. and R. Chambers, 1888. Web. Collier, Jeremy. A Short View of the Immorality of the English Stage. 1698. Ed. Arthur Freeman. New York: Garland, 1972. Collins, Margo. “Eliza Haywood’s Cross-Gendered Amatory Audience.” Eighteenth-Century Women: Studies in Their Lives, Work and Culture 2 (2002): 43–60.

Bibliography

 181 

Coppola, Al. “The Secret History of Eliza Haywood’s Works: The Early Novel and the Book Trade.” 1650–1850: Ideas, Æsthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 19 (2012). Craft-Fairchild, Catherine. Masquerade and Gender: Disguise and Female Identity in Eighteenth-Century Fictions by Women. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1993. Crittal, Elizabeth, ed. “The Borough of Wilton: Introduction.” A History of the County of Wiltshire. 11 vols. Volume 6 (1962): 1–7. British History Online. Web. 17 Sept. 2013. Croskery, Margaret Case. “Masquing Desire: The Politics of Passion of Eliza Haywood’s Fantmina.” Saxton and Bocchicchio 69–94. Daily Courant. Web. ProQuest British Periodicals. 10 Dec. 2013. Daily Journal. Web. Gale. 17th–18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. 2 Sept. 2013. Daily Post. Web. Gale. 17th–18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. 2 Sept. 2013. Day, Robert Adam. Told in Letters: Epistolary Fiction before Richardson. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1966. Dryden, John. The Conquest of Grenada by the Spaniards in Two Parts. London, 1672. –  Of Heroique Plays. Prefaced to The Conquest of Granada. London, 1672. Early English Books Online. eebo.chadwyck.com. 15 Aug. 2013. An Essay on Plays and Masquerades. 3rd ed. London: Eman. Matthews, 1724. Web. Gale. Eighteenth-Century Collections Online. 2 Sept. 2013. Etherege, George. The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter. 1676. Ed. John Barnard. London: Bloomsbury, 2007. Farquhar, George. The Constant Couple, or A Trip to the Jubilee. 1699. Ed. William Meyers. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Fennetaux, Ariane. “Men in Gowns: Nightgowns and the Construction of Masculinity in Eighteenth-Century England.” Immediations: The Research Journal of the Courtauld Institute of Art 1 (2004): 76–89. Fielding, Henry. 1730. The Author’s Farce: Henry Fielding Plays. Volume I, 1728–1731. Ed. Thomas Lockwood. Oxford UP, 2004. –  The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling. 1749. Ed. Fredson Bowers. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1975. –  Joseph Andrews. 1742. Ed. Martin C. Battestin. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1967. –  “On the Knowledge and Characters of Men.” Miscellanies by Henry Fielding Volume One. 1743. Ed. Henry Knight Miller. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972. Fiske, John. “The Popular Economy.” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. Ed. John Storey. 4th ed. Harlow, UK: Pearson, 2009. 564–80.

182

Bibliography

Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera. 1728. Ed. Bryan Loughrey and T.O. Treadwell. London: Penguin, 1986. Gerrard, Christine. Aaron Hill: The Muses’ Projector, 1685–1750. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Gevirtz, Karen. Life after Death: Widows and the English Novel, Defoe to Austen. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2005. Gibson, Edmund. “Sermon Preached to the Societies for the Reformation of Manners.” Rpt. in An Essay on Plays and Masquerades. 3rd ed. London: Eman. Matthews, 1724. Web. Gale. Eighteenth-Century Collections Online. 2 Sept. 2013. Gordon, Thomas. “Of Masquerades.” The Humorist: Being Essays upon Several Subjects. 3rd ed. London, 1724. Web. Gale. Eighteenth-Century Collections Online. 2 Sept. 2013. Gosse, Edmund. Gossip in a Library. 2nd ed. London: William Heinemann, 1892. Hall, Dennis. “Signs of Life in the Eighteenth Century: Dr. Johnson and the Invention of Popular Culture.” Kentucky Philological Review 19 (2005): 12–16. Hall, Stuart. “Notes on Deconstructing ‘the Popular.’” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. 4th ed. Ed. John Storey. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. 508–18. Hammond, Brean. “Mid-Century English Quixotism and the Defence of the Novel.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 10.3 (1998): 247–68. Web. Project Muse. 17 Aug. 2013. Hare, Edward. “The History of ‘Nervous Disorders’ from 1600 to 1840, and a Comparison with Modern Views.” British Journal of Psychiatry 159.1 (1991): 37–45. Web. PubMed. 12 Jan. 2014. Harvey, Karen. Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. Haywood, Eliza. The Dramatic Historiographer: or, the British Theatre Delineated. London: F. Cogan, 1735. Web. Eighteenth-Century Collections Online. 28 Aug. 2013. –  The Fatal Secret, or, Constancy in Distress. London: J. Roberts, 1724. Web. Eighteenth-Century Collections Online. 28 Aug. 2013. –  The Masqueraders, or Fatal Curiosity (Part I). Ed. Patrick Spedding. Course Reader ATS3487. Monash University, Clayton. Victoria, Australia. Sept. 2013. –  The Rash Resolve: or, The Untimely Discovery. A Novel. London: J. Roberts. 1724. Web. Gale. Eighteenth- Century Collections Online. 21 Jan. 2014 Heydegger’s Letter to the Bishop of London. London: N. Cox, 1724. Web. Gale. Eighteenth-Century Collections Online. 2 Sept. 2013. Heyl, Christoph. “The Metamorphosis of the Mask in Seventeenth- and EighteenthCentury London.” Masquerade and Identities: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Marginality. Ed. Efrat Tseelon. London: Routledge, 2001. 114–34.

Bibliography

 183 

Hollis, Karen. “Eliza Haywood and the Gender of Print.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 38.1 (1997): 43–62. Web. JSTOR. 10 June 2013. Hollows, Joanne. Feminism, Femininity, and Popular Culture. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 2000. Hutcheon, Linda, with Siobhan O’Flynn. A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2013. Huyssen, Andreas. “Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism’s Other.” Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture. Ed. Tania Modleski. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986. 188–207. Hynes, Peter. “Richard Steele and the Genealogy of Sentimental Drama: A Reading of The Conscious Lovers.” Papers on Language and Literature 40 (2004): 142–66. Web. EBSCO. 16 Jan. 2014. Johnson, Charles. The Masquerade, a Comedy. 1717. Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger, 2010. Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language. London: J. Jonson, 1799. Web. Gale. Eighteenth-Century Collections Online. 26 Oct. 2013. –  The Rambler 31 March 1750. Web. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library. 22 Jan. 2014. Keymer, Thomas. Introduction. Joseph Andrews and Shamela. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. ix–xxxiii. King, Kathryn R. A Political Biography of Eliza Haywood. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012. –  “Eliza Haywood at the Sign of the Fame in Covent Garden (1742–1744).” Notes and Queries 57.1 (2010): 83–6. –  “New Contexts for Early Novels by Women: The Case of Eliza Haywood, Aaron Hill, and the Hillarians, 1719–1725.” A Companion to the EighteenthCentury English Novel and Culture. Ed. Paula R. Backscheider and Catherine Ingrassia. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 261–75. Knellwolf, Christina. A Contradiction Still: Representations of Women in the Poetry of Alexander Pope. Manchester: Manchester UP: 1998. Kukkonen, Karin. “The Mind behind the Mask: Reading for Character in the Masquerade.” Neophilologus 98 (2014): 161–76. Web. JSTOR. 13 Aug. 2014. The Ladies Journal 16 Feb. 1727. Dublin, 1727. Web. Bodleian Library. 14 Jan. 2014. Lansdowne, George Granville, Baron. The British Enchanters: or, No Magick like Love. A Tragedy. London, 1706. Web. Gale. Eighteenth- Century Collections Online. 17 Sept. 2013. Lanser, Susan S. “Novel (Sapphic) Subjects: The Sexual History of Form.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 42.3 (2009): 497–503. Web. MAS Ultra. 9 Jan. 2014. London Daily Post. Web. Gale. 17th–18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. 2 Sept. 2013.

184

Bibliography

London Pharmacopoeia, or the London Dispensatory. London: John Allen, 1720. Web. Medical Heritage Library. archive.org. 21 Jan. 2014. “Love’s Intervention: or, the Recreation in Vogue. An Excellent New Ballad upon the Masquerades.” London: E. Curll, 1718. Web. Gale. Eighteenth-­ Century Collections Online. 2 Sept. 2013. Luhning, Holly. “Writing Bodies in Popular Culture: Eliza Haywood.” Women, Popular Culture and the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Tiffany Potter. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2012. 150–67. The Masquerade. A Poem. London: J Roberts, 1724. Web. Gale. EighteenthCentury Collections Online. 2 Sept. 2013. McKeon, Michael. “Watt’s Rise of the Novel within the Tradition of the Rise of the Novel.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 12.2 (2000): 253–76. Merritt, Juliette. Beyond Spectacle: Eliza Haywood’s Female Spectators. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2004. Miller, J. Hillis. “Narrative.” Critical Terms for Literary Study. Ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990. 66–79. Mullan, John. “Hypochondria and Hysteria: Sensibility and the Physicians.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 25.2 (1984): 141–74. Web. JSTOR. 19 June 2013. Olsen, Kristen. Daily Life in 18th-Century Britain. London: Greenwood Press, 1999. Orr, Leah. “The Basis for Attribution in the Canon of Eliza Haywood.” The Library 7th series. 12.4 (2011): 335–75. Web. Oxford Journals. 14 Dec. 2013. O’Driscoll, Sally. “Reading through Desire: Interpretive Practices for EighteenthCentury Popular Culture.” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 29 (2006): 237–51. Web. Wiley Online Library. 11 July 2012. O’Sullivan, Tim, John Hartley, et al. Key Concepts in Communication. London: Methuen, 1983. Pollock, Anthony. Gender and the Fictions of the Public Sphere, 1690–1755. London: Taylor and Francis, 2008. Pope, Alexander. “The Dunciad.” The Poems of Alexander Pope: A One-Volume Edition of the Twickenham Edition. Ed. John Butt. Cambridge, MA: Yale UP, 1963. 317–60. –  “An Essay on Criticism.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 4th ed. Ed. David Damrosch et al. New York: Longman, 2010. 2440–58. –  “The Rape of the Lock.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 4th ed. Ed. David Damrosch et al. New York: Longman, 2010. 2470–90. Potter, Tiffany. “‘A God-like Sublimity of Passion’: Eliza Haywood’s Libertine Consistency.” The Eighteenth-Century Novel 1 (2001): 95–126.

Bibliography

 185 

–  “Historicizing the Popular and the Feminine: The Rape of the Lock and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” Women, Popular Culture and the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Tiffany Potter. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2012. 5–24. Price, Martin. “Patterns of Civility: Art and Morality.” Alexander Pope’s ‘The Rape of the Lock.’ Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1988. 9–12. Probert, Rebecca. Marriage Law and Practice in the Long Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Reay, Barry. Popular Cultures in England 1550–1750. New York: Longman, 1998. Reeve, Clara. The Progress of Romance. London, 1785. Web. Gale. EighteenthCentury Collections Online. 26 July 2013. Ribiero, Aileen. The Dress Worn at Masquerades in England, 1730 to 1790, and Its Relation to Fancy Dress in Portraiture. London: Taylor and Francis, 1984. Richetti, John. The English Novel in History 1700–1800. London: Routledge, 1999. –  “Histories by Eliza Haywood and Henry Fielding: Imitation and Adaptation.” Saxton and Bocchicchio 240–58. Rogers, Pat. The Alexander Pope Encyclopedia. London: Greenwood, 2004. “Royal Parks.” Web. www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/st-jamess-park/about-st-jamesspark/landscape-history Rutsky, R.L. “Popular/Theory.” Strategies: A Journal of Theory, Culture and Politics 12.1 (1997): 7–11. Web. EBSCO. 9 July 2012. Ryan, Marie-Laure. Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. London: Routledge, 2006. Saxton, Kirsten T., and Rebecca P. Bocchicchio, eds. The Passionate Fictions of Eliza Haywood: Essays on Her Life and Work. Lexington: UP of Kentucky. 2000. Savage, Richard. The Authors of the Town: A Satire. London: J. Roberts, 1725. Web. Google Books. 6 Jan. 2014. –  “To Mrs. Eliza Haywood, on her Novel, call’d Love in Excess.” In Haywood, Love in Excess. Preface to Part 2. London, 1720. –  “To Mrs. Eliza Haywood, on her Novel, Call’d the Rash Resolve.” The Rash Resolve: or the Untimely Discovery. Eliza Haywood. London: J. Roberts, 1724. x–xii. Web. Eighteenth- Century Collections Online. Gale. 21 Jan. 2014 Schofield, Mary Anne. Eliza Haywood. Boston: Twayne, 1985. –  Masking and Unmasking the Female Mind: Disguising Romances in Feminine Fictions. Newark: U of Delaware P, 1990. A Seasonable Apology for Mr. Heidegger. London: A. Moor, 1724. Web. Gale. Eighteenth-Century Collections Online. 2 September 2013.

186

Bibliography

Sherrow, Victoria. For Appearance’ Sake: The Historical Encyclopedia of Good Looks, Beauty, and Grooming. Westport: Oryx Press, 2001. Shevelow, Kathryn. Women and Print Culture. London: Routledge, 1989. Shoemaker, Robert B. “The Taming of the Duel: Masculinity, Honour and Ritual Violence in London, 1660–1800.” The Historical Journal 45.3 (2002): 525–45. Spacks, Patricia Meyer. Gossip. New York: Knopf, 1985. Spedding, Patrick. A Bibliography of Eliza Haywood. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2004. –  “Eliza Haywood, Writing (and) Pornography in 1742.” Women Writing 1550–1750. Ed. Jo Wallwork and Paul Salzman. Melbourne: Meridian, 2001. 237–51. Steele, Richard. “The Conscious Lovers.” 1722. Ed. Lisa A. Freeman. The Broadview Anthology of Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century English Drama. Ed. J. Douglas Canfield. Peterborough: Broadview, 2001. 428–70. Sterling, James. “To Mrs. Eliza Haywood, on her Writings.” In Haywood, Secret Histories, Novels and Poems. 4 vols. Vol 1. London, 1725. Stewart, Carol. The Eighteenth-Century Novel and the Secularization of Ethics. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013. Turner, Cheryl. Living by the Pen: Women Writers in the Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge, 1992. Turner, David. Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England, 1660–1740. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. Vincent, David. Literacy and Popular Culture: England 1750–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. Warner, William B. “The Elevation of the Novel in England: Hegemony and Literary History.” ELH 59 (1992): 577–96. Web. JSTOR. 11 July 2013. –  Licensing Entertainment: The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain. Berkeley: U of California P, 1998. –  “Novels on the Market.” The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780. Ed. John Richetti. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012. 87–106. Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. London: Chatto and Windus, 1957. Weekly Journal, or Saturday’s Post. 15 February 1718. Web. Gale. 17th–18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. 28 Nov. 2013. –  19 April 1718. Web. Gale. 17th–18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. 28 Nov. 2013. –  25 January 1724. Web. Gale. 17th–18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. 28 Nov. 2013. –  18 April 1724. Web. Gale. 17th–18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. 28 Nov. 2013.

Bibliography

 187 

Whicher, George. The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood. New York: Columbia UP, 1915. Wilson, Brett D. “Bevil’s Eyes: Or, How Crying at The Conscious Lovers Could Save Britain.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 45.4 (2012): 497–518. Woods, Charles B. Introduction. The Author’s Farce. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1966. Wright, Lynn Marie, and Donald J. Newman. Fair Philosopher: Eliza Haywood and The Female Spectator. Lewisburg: Bucknell, 2006.