The most popular work by Miss Fielding was The Little Female Academy. David Simple, to be sure, went through two editions in 1744. But the indications of contemporary recognition are not at all commensurate with the praise from her brother and Richardson and other high authorities. Of foreign appreciation of her work there are more proofs. David Simple was translated into German[356] in 1746 and into French in 1755,[357] and The Countess of Gräfin was translated into German in 1761.[358] The French translator of David Simple commented on the approbation générale which this romance had found.[359]
Charlotte Lennox (1720-1804)
Charlotte Rumsey was the daughter of Colonel James Rumsey, Lieutenant-Governor of New York. At fifteen she was sent to England as the protégé and probable heiress of an aunt. But the aunt became insane, and the girl was left penniless. The only facts that emerge concerning the difficult years before her marriage to Mr. Lennox in about 1748 have to do with her very mediocre career as an actress.
Except for a volume of poems in 1747, it was not till after her marriage that Mrs. Lennox came forward prominently as an author. Her two-volume novel, The Life of Harriet Stuart, Written by Herself, appeared in 1751. But in literary circles she was evidently well known before this, for Johnson was her especial friend. When her manuscript was ready for publication, he arranged a celebration at his Club. The festivities were to last all night. Mrs. Lennox was ceremoniously crowned with laurel, and there was a magnificent hot apple-pie stuck with bay leaves.[360] This first novel is probably in part autobiographical inasmuch as the heroine, Harriet Stuart, is the daughter of a man of high official rank in America, and goes to England at fifteen to live with an aunt who becomes insane and leaves her penniless. But this is merely a slight framework for a series of love adventures. Miss Stuart's wit and beauty gather about her lovers of all varieties, army officers, sea-captains, pirates, merchants; and the alarming crises of her fate put her into close competition with Clarissa Harlowe herself. America, France, and England are the far-separated scenes of Miss Stuart's trials and victories, the emphasis being on her life in America. There would be a chance for some interesting local color in this representation of mid-eighteenth-century life in New York if the young lady could have spared a moment from her adventures to observe her surroundings. An Indian encampment, a visit to a fort, an escapade to a "farm," a midnight row on the Hudson, are mentioned, but with no comment. Towns and houses, roads, rivers, and seas, are but localities for love scenes, means of transit from one episode to another. The story is told with a deft manipulation of details and an easy fluency that would seem to indicate something of a previous literary apprenticeship. At any rate, in this novel she had found her medium, and she was soon ready with a tale that gave her genuine distinction. The Female Quixote appeared in 1752 with a Dedication written by Johnson, and it was reviewed by him in The Gentleman's Magazine for March. He said of it: "Mr. Fielding, however emulous of Cervantes, and jealous of a rival, acknowledges in his paper of the 24th, that in many instances, this copy excels the original, and though he has no connection with the author, he concludes his encomium on the work, by earnestly recommending it as a most extraordinary, and most excellent performance. 'It is,' says he, 'a work of true humour, and cannot fail of giving a rational, as well as a very pleasing amusement, to a sensible reader, who will at once be instructed, and highly diverted.'"[361] Johnson's name is still more intimately connected with the book, for he wrote the chapter which has the heading, "Being in the author's opinion, the best chapter in this history."[362] Harriet Stuart reads like an echo of Richardson, but in The Female Quixote Mrs. Lennox strikes an original note. Comedy had already, a generation earlier, in Biddy Tipkin, made sport of the romance-reading girls of the day. But the satire was new in fiction. And it was carried out with a fullness and accuracy of details possible only to one who had herself been a traveler in enchanted realms. Mrs. Lennox must at some time have been as devoted to French fiction as even Dorothy Osborne and Mrs. Pepys in the preceding century. Her story is long-drawn-out and improbable, but the cleverness with which Arabella and Lucy parody Don Quixote and Sancho Panza gives the book a notable place among the English followers of Cervantes. The Spiritual Quixote (1773), a satire on the Methodists, and The Benevolent Quixote (1791), a satire on mawkish ideas of charity, are inferior in vivacity and interest to Mrs. Lennox's work.
In 1753-54 Mrs. Lennox brought out Shakespeare Illustrated; or, Novels and Histories on which the Plays are ... founded, collected and translated, an uncritical piece of work according to present standards, but historically significant as one of the earliest attempts to present Shakespeare's sources.[363] A two-volume novel, Henrietta, in 1758, was dramatized as a didactic comedy under the title The Sister,[364] and brought out at Covent Garden in 1769. Though Miss Mattocks played the chief part, and the Prologue and Epilogue were respectively by Colman and Goldsmith, the play met with but moderate success. In 1760-61 Mrs. Lennox edited The Ladies Museum, in which were illustrated articles on natural history written especially for ladies, philosophical discussions simplified for ladies, and continued stories of the love-adventure type evidently calculated for the same tastes. The most interesting character drawing is that of an incipient Mrs. Malaprop in the person of a Mrs. Gibbons.
If any annals were extant of Mrs. Lennox's life we should doubtless find records of continuous study. At least we constantly get new proofs of her learning. The Memoirs of M. de Bethune, Duke of Sully, in three volumes in 1756,[365] The Memoirs of the Countess Berci, in two volumes in the same year, and Memoirs for the History of Madame de Maintenon, in 1757, show not only her mastery of French, but very steady application to intellectual tasks. In 1759 she had what might be considered her crowning honor as a learned lady. She was chosen to edit a translation of Brumoy's Greek Theatre. In collaboration with her were Dr. Johnson, Dr. Gregory Sharpe, Dr. Grainger, and John Bourrya, men of recognized standing as scholars.[366]
Mrs. Lennox lived forty-four years after the close of the period under discussion. But she belongs properly in the first half of the century because all her important work comes between 1750 and 1760. After a decade of exceptional literary activity she sinks into obscurity. In 1775 Dr. Johnson assisted in preparing proposals for the publication of her collected works, in three quarto volumes, by subscription. Had this plan been carried out there would doubtless have been preserved much interesting information concerning the social and literary life of an eminently successful mid-eighteenth-century bas bleu. From the facts at hand it is easy to see that she was countenanced by some of the best minds of her time. Her portrait was painted by Reynolds and engraved by Bartolozzi.
Miss Catharine Talbot (1721-1770)
In 1770 Miss Elizabeth Carter gathered together and published the Works of her friend Miss Catharine Talbot. There had been considerable urgency on the part of Miss Talbot's friends to secure such a publication during her lifetime, but she was too timid, and, though The Green Book in which she kept sketches and fragments, and "the considering drawer," constantly received accessions, her modest opinion of her own worth and an exaggerated dread of general criticism held her back from the ordeal of the printed page. But when the Works finally appeared they achieved immediate popularity. The Reflections on the Seven Days of the Week went through three editions the first year and there was a tenth edition in 1784. Of the Works the eighth edition appeared within forty years. The extravagant contemporary estimate of Miss Talbot as a moral and religious writer, as a supporter of Christian ethics, can awake only surprise in the modern reader. Even a reader whose mind has been subdued to second-class eighteenth-century didacticism finds Miss Talbot's moralizings pale and anæmic. But when we read her letters we come upon a much more attractive and vital personality. A letter descriptive of Mr. Browne Willis and his four daughters shows a gay spirit and a talent for minute observation and social satire of the Jane Austen type.[367]
From the age of five Miss Talbot lived in the family of Mr. Seeker, Bishop of Oxford and later Archbishop of Canterbury. Her spiritual and mental training were constantly under the supervision of the Archbishop, who loved her devotedly. And her education is particularly interesting as an illustration of the desultory and fragmentary character of the intellectual discipline provided for a girl of active mind, even in one of the best families. One advantage was hers from early life, and that was her association with the learned guests at the deanery where there was always an atmosphere of scholarly and serious discussion. And her position as a member of the Archbishop's family not only gave her entrance into the best social circles, but made it incumbent on her, as hostess or guest, to cultivate the amenities of life. But she did comparatively little in the way of exact studies. She was proficient in French and Italian, but she knew no Hebrew or Greek and but little Latin. She had tutors in geography and astronomy and found satisfaction in the conceptions opened up to her by these subjects. Of her drawing and painting for which she had considerable repute she wrote in 1745: