her stories were cast in some sort of a disguise.  She had already used the obvious ruse of an allegory in the “Memoirs of a Certain Island” and had just completed a feigned history in the “Court of Carimania.”  The well known “Turkish Spy” and its imitations, or perhaps the recent but untranslated “Lettres Persanes,” may have suggested to her the possibility of combining bits of gossip in letters purporting to be translated from the Arabic and written by some supermundane being.  The latter part of the device had already been used by Defoe in “The Consolidator.”  Mrs. Haywood merely added the suggestion of a mysterious Oriental source.  She makes no attempt to satirize contemporary society, but is content to retail vague bits of town talk to customers who might be deluded into imagining them of importance.  “The new created Vizier,” the airy correspondent reports, “might have succeeded better in another Post, than in this, which with so much earnestness he has sollicited.  For, notwithstanding the Plaudits he has received from our Princess, and the natural Propensity to State-Affairs, given him by his Saturnine Genius; his Significator Mars promis’d him greater Honours in the Field, than he can possibly attain to in the Cabinet.”  And so on.  Both “Bath-Intrigues” and “Letters from the Palace of Fame” may be classed as romans a clef although no “key” for either has yet been found.  In all other respects they conform to type.

The only one of Mrs. Haywood’s scandal novels that rivaled the fame of her “Memoirs of a Certain Island” was the notorious “Secret History of the Present Intrigues of the Court of Carimania” (1727), a feigned history on a more coherent plan than the allegorical hodge-podge of the former compilation.  The incidents in this book are all loosely connected with the amours of Theodore, Prince of Carimania, with various beauties of this court.  The chronicle minutely records the means he employed to overcome their scruples, to stifle their jealousies and their reproaches, and finally to extricate himself from affairs of gallantry grown tedious.  Nearly all the changes are rung on the theme of amorous adventure in describing the progress of the royal rake and his associates.  The “key"[23] at the end identifies the characters with various noble personages at the court of George II when Prince of Wales.  The melting Lutetia, for instance, represented “Mrs. Baladin” or more accurately Mary Bellenden, maid of honor to the Princess, to whose charms Prince George was in fact not insensible.  Barsina and Arilla were also maids of honor:  the former became the second wife of John, Duke of Argyle (Aridanor), while the latter was that sister of Sir Sidney Meadows celebrated by Pope for her prudence.  Although the “key” discreetly refrained from identifying the amorous Theodore, no great penetration was necessary to see in his character a picture of the royal George himself.  A tradition not well authenticated but extremely probable states that printer and publisher were taken up in consequence of this daring scandal.