LATER FICTION:  THE DOMESTIC NOVEL

No such homogeneity as marked the works of Mrs. Haywood’s first decade of authorship can be discovered in the productions of her last fifteen years.  The vogue of the short romantic tale was then all but exhausted, her stock of scandal was no longer new, and accordingly she was obliged to grope her way toward fresh fields, even to the barren ground of the moral essay.  But besides the letters, essays, and conduct books, and the anonymous pamphlets of doubtful character that may have occupied her pen during this period, she engaged in several experiments in legitimate prose fiction of various sorts, which have little in common except their more considerable length.  Although the name of Mrs. Eliza Haywood was not displayed upon the title-pages nor mentioned in the reviews of these novels, the authorship was not carefully concealed and was probably known to the curious.  The titles of nearly all of them were mentioned by the “Biographia Dramatica” in the list of the novelist’s meritorious works.

The earliest and the only one to bear the signature of Eliza Haywood at the end of the dedication was borrowed from the multifarious and unremarkable literary wares of Charles de Fieux, Chevalier de Mouhy.  “The Virtuous Villager, or Virgin’s Victory:  Being The Memoirs of a very Great Lady at the Court of France.  Written by Herself.  In which the Artifices of designing Men are fully detected and exposed; and the Calamities they bring on credulous believing Woman, are particularly related,” was given to the English public in 1742 as a work suited to inculcate the principles of virtue, and probably owed its being to the previous success of “Pamela."[1] In the original a dull and spiritless imitation of Marivaux, the work was not improved by translation, and met naturally the reception due its slender merits.  But along with the English versions of Le Sage, Marivaux, and the Abbe Prevost, “The Virtuous Villager” helped to accustom the readers of fiction to two volume novels and to pave the way for the numerous pages of Richardson.

Not more than a year from the time when the four duodecimos of “Pamela” introduced kitchen morality into the polite world, the generosity of prominent men and women was directed toward a charity recently established after long agitation.[2] To furnish suitable decorations for the Foundling Hospital in Lamb’s Conduit, Hogarth contributed the unsold lottery tickets for his “March to Finchley,” and other well-known painters lent their services.  Handel, a patron of the institution, gave the organ it still possesses, and society followed the lead of the men of genius.  The grounds of the Foundling Hospital became in Georgian days a “fashionable morning lounge.”  Writers of ephemeral literature were not slow to perceive how the wind lay and to take advantage of the interest aroused by the new foundation.  The exposed infant, one of the oldest literary devices, was copiously revived, and during