[12] G.A.  Aitken, Introduction to The Fortunate Mistress, viii.

[13] The Fortunate Mistress; or, a History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau....  London:  Printed for E. Applebee. 1740. p. 359.  Pp. 300-59 are taken from The British Recluse.

CHAPTER IV

SECRET HISTORIES AND SCANDAL NOVELS

Some tentative experiments in the way of scandal-mongering may be found in Mrs. Haywood’s work even before the first of her Duncan Campbell pamphlets.  Many of the short romances discussed in the second chapter were described on the title-page as secret histories, while others apparently indistinguishable from them in kind were denominated novels.  “Love in Excess” and “The Unequal Conflict,” for instance, were given the latter title, but a tale like “Fantomina,” evidently imaginary, purported to be the “Secret History of an Amour between two Persons of Condition.”  “The British Recluse” was in sub-title the “Secret History of Cleomira,” and “Cleomelia:  or, the Generous Mistress” claimed to be the “Secret History of a Lady Lately arriv’d from Bengall.”  The writer attached no particular significance to her use of the term, but employed it as a means of stimulating a meretricious interest in her stories.  In fact she goes out of her way in the Preface to “The Injur’d Husband” to defend herself and at the same time to suggest the possibility that her novel might contain references to English contemporaries.  The defence is carefully worded so that it does not constitute an absolute denial, but rather whets the curiosity.

“It is not, therefore, to excuse my Want of Judgment in the Conduct, or my Deficiency of Expressing the Passions I have endeavour’d to represent, but to clear myself of an Accusation, which, I am inform’d, is already contrived and prepared to thunder out against me, as soon as this is publish’d, that I take this Pains.  A Gentleman, who applies the little Ingenuity he is Master of to no other Study than that of sowing Dissention among those who are so unhappy, and indeed unwise, as to entertain him, either imagines, or pretends to do so, that tho’ I have laid the Scene in Paris, I mean that the Adventure shou’d be thought to have happen’d in London; and that in the Character of a French Baroness I have attempted to expose the Reputation of an English Woman of Quality.  I shou’d be sorry to think the Actions of any of our Ladies such as you’d give room for a Conjecture of the Reality of what he wou’d suggest.  But suppose there were indeed an Affinity between the Vices I have describ’d, and those of some Woman he knows (for doubtless if there be, she must be of his Acquaintance) I leave the World to judge to whom she is indebted for becoming the Subject of Ridicule, to me for drawing a Picture whose Original is unknown, or to him who writes her Name at the Bottom of it.