"If addicted to drinking, she must take care to have his cellar well stor'd with the best and richest wines, and never seem averse to any company he shall think fit to entertain:—If fond of women, she must endeavour to convince him that the virtuous part of the sex are capable of being as agreeable companions as those of the most loose principles;—and this, not by arguments, for those he will not listen to;—but by getting often to her house, the most witty, gay, and spirituous of her acquaintance, who will sing, dance, tell pleasant stories, and take all the freedoms that innocence allows" (p. 163).
Occasionally the advice to married women is very practical, as the following deterrent from gluttony shows:
"I dined one day with a lady, who the whole time she employ'd her knife and fork with incredible swiftness in dispatching a load of turkey and chine she had heap'd upon her plate, still kept a keen regard on what she had left behind, greedily devouring with her eyes all that remain'd in the dish, and throwing a look of envy on every one who put in for the smallest share.—My advice to such a one is, that she would have a great looking-glass fix'd opposite the seat she takes at table; and I am much mistaken, if the sight of herself in those grim attitudes I have mention'd, will not very much contribute to bring her to more moderation" (p. 276).
The method of "The Husband, in Answer to the Wife" (1756) is similar to that of its companion-piece; in fact, much of the same advice is merely modified or amplified to suit the other sex. The husband is warned to avoid drinking to excess and some other particulars which may happen to be displeasing to his spouse, such as using too much freedom in his wife's presence with any of her female acquaintance. He is instructed in the manner in which it will be most proper for a married man to carry himself towards the maidservants of his family, and also the manner of behavior best becoming a husband on a full detection of his wife's infidelity. As in "The Wife" the path of marriage leads but to divorce. One is forcibly reminded of Hogarth's "Marriage à la Mode."
Not altogether different is the conception of wedlock in Mrs. Haywood's novels of domestic life written at about the same period, but the pictures there shown are painted in incomparably greater detail, with a fuller appreciation of character, and without that pious didacticism which even the most lively exertions of Eliza Haywood's romancing genius failed to leaven in her essays.
FOOTNOTES [1] Memoirs of a Certain Island, I, 141. The letter is one of a packet conveyed away by Sylphs much resembling those in The Rape of the Lock.
[2] Miss C.E. Morgan, The Novel of Manners, 72.
[3]
The author herself describes it in the Preface as "more properly … a
Paraphrase than a Translation."
[4] Later A Stage-Coach Journey to Exeter, 1725.
[5]
A. Esdaile, English Tales and Romances, Introduction, xxxiii.
B.
[6]
Robert Boyle's Martyrdom of Theodora, 1687, is thus described by Dr.
Johnson. Boswell's Johnson, Oxford ed., I, 208.