Chapter VII: Part II: At Sienna the lovers enjoy a season of perfect felicity until

Don Jaques comes to town in pursuit of a defaulting steward, discovers Clementina, and apprehends the pair. While the two are confined in separate convents awaiting trial, Clementina's maid, Ismenia (who has already related her little history), becomes their go-between and serves her mistress the same trick that Clementina had already played upon her friend Miramene. Ismenia and the faithless Baron decamp to parts unknown, while Clementina's father starts back to Rome with his recreant daughter. In man's clothes she escapes from her parent to seek revenge upon her lover. At an inn she hears a woman in the next room complaining of her gallant's desertion, and going in to console her, hears the moving story of Signiora Vicino and Monsieur Beaumont, told as a warning to the credulous and unwary sex. The injured fair enters a convent.

Still in pursuit of her lover, Clementina on Montelupe meets the funeral of a young woman who had been torn to pieces by wolves. The chief mourner proves to be Glencairn. She is hindered in an attempt to stab him and thrown into prison, where he visits her and disarms her resentment by offering to marry her. After the ceremony they proceed to Paris where each plunges into dissipation. Finally they separate, Clementina dies of a fever, and the Baron is left free to pursue his inclinations through a possible third part, which, however, was never written.

After a slumber of forty years "The Agreeable Caledonian" was reprinted, as the "Monthly Review" informs us, from a copy corrected by Mrs. Haywood not long before her death.[16] The review continues, "It is like the rest of Mrs. Haywood's novels, written in a tawdry style, now utterly exploded; the romances of these days being reduced much nearer the standard of nature, and to the manners of the living world." Realism is, indeed, far to seek in the brief but intricate tissue of incidents that made the novel of 1728. To a taste accustomed to "Sir Charles Grandison," and "Peregrine Pickle," and "The Sentimental Journey" the rehash of Eliza Haywood's novel must have seemed very far even from the manners of the world of fiction. The judgment of the "Critical Review" was still more savage in its accuracy.[17] "This is a republication of a dull, profligate Haywoodian production, in which all the males are rogues, and all the females whores, without a glimpse of plot, fable, or sentiment." In its uncompromising literalness the critic's verdict ranks with the learned Ascham's opinion of the "Morte D'Arthur,"--except that it has not been superseded. The same animadversion might be urged against Defoe's "Colonel Jacque" or "The Fortunate Mistress." If Mrs. Haywood sinned against the standards of the age to come, she was not out of touch with the spirit of her own generation.

As a writer she knew but one unfailing recipe for popularity: whatever she touched must be forthwith gilded with passion. The chief _raison d'être_ for "The Fair Hebrew: or, a True, but Secret History of Two Jewish Ladies, Who lately resided in London" (1729) was to gratify the prejudices of anti-Semitic readers, yet it is hardly distinguishable from her sentimental love stories.

The young and gay Dorante, going to the synagogue for a lark, is tempted by the sight of a fair hand to break into the woman's apartment and to expose himself to the charms of the beautiful Kesiah. He engages her in a correspondence, but at their first interview she gives him clearly to understand that he can gain nothing from her but by marriage. Driven by his unhappy passion, he complies with her demand, and she becomes a Church of England woman. But once married, Kesiah is too proud to permit the concealment that prudence demands. Though his father is sure to disinherit them, she insists upon revealing the marriage.

Dorante entrusts his small stock of money to his wife's brother, Abimelech, in order to start him in trade. The Jew goes to Holland with a woman whom he has saved from religious murder at the hands of a Levite, and nothing further is heard from him or the money. Imprisoned by his creditors, Dorante is persuaded by his wife to sign away the entail of his estate in return for a sum of money. Thereupon she departs with the gold and a new gallant, leaving her unhappy husband to be rescued from want by the kindness, of a younger brother. After the poor solace of hearing that Kesiah and her paramour have been lost at sea, he dies of a broken heart.[18]

Though Eliza Haywood exhausted nearly every possible bit of sensationalism that could be extracted from tales of passion, she almost never made use of the heroic feats of arms which constituted a no less important resource of the French romances. Her heroes are victors in love but not in war. The sole exception is a little romance of Moorish chivalry in the eighth century. Though this period had already been pre-empted by Mrs. Manley's "Memoirs of Europe," there is little doubt that Mrs. Haywood was responsible for "The Arragonian Queen: A Secret History" (1724), a peculiar blend of heroic adventures in battle, bullfight, and tournament, with amorous intrigues of the most involved kind.

Prince Albaraizor of Arragon goes to assist Omar, King of Valencia, against a traitorous foe, and with the help of the young general, Abdelhamar, succeeds in vanquishing the enemy, though the latter youth is seriously wounded while performing miracles of valor. To reward the conqueror the hand of the Princess Zephalinda is bestowed upon him, but she unfortunately is already enamored of Abdelhamar, whom she had learned to love at a bullfight. But in spite of a repining letter from her constant lover, and in spite of his appearance before her all pale and trembling from his wounds, the Princess refuses to deviate from her duty.

"The next Day the Marriage was celebrated with all the intended
Magnificence, and on their return from the Mosque, the Prince and
Princess repair'd to a stately Scaffold, adorn'd with inventive
Luxury, whence they might behold a Tournament, the Prize of which was
a Sword richly embellish'd with Diamonds, to be given by the Princess
to him that should overcome; the whole Court were there, endeavouring
to outshine each other in the Costliness of their Apparel--within the
Barriers were all the Flower of the adjoining Kingdoms, drawn thither
with a Thirst of Fame, and a Desire to shew their Dexterity. The
Arragonian Noblemen were the Defenders against all Comers, and were
like to have carried away the Prize, behaving themselves with the
utmost Skill and Courage, when there appear'd in the Lists a Knight in
black Armour, whose whole Air and dexterity in Horsemanship
immediately attracted the Eyes of the numerous Spectators; the first
Course he made, confirm'd them in the good opinion they had conceiv'd
of him: in short, no body was able to stand against him, and he
remain'd Conqueror, with the universal Applause of the whole Company.
--He waited for some time, to see if no fresh Challengers would offer
themselves; but none appearing, he was led to the Princess's Scaffold,
to receive the Reward he had so well merited: He took it with the
greatest Submission, but without putting up his Beaver, or discovering
who he was, and kissing it with profound Respect, retir'd, without so
much as making any obeisance to the King or Prince; and mixing himself
with the Crowd of Knights, got off without being discover'd. Every
body was surpriz'd at the uncourteous Behaviour of so otherwise
accomplish'd a Cavalier, but none could possibly give the least guess
at who it should be--the succeeding Diversions soon put him out of
every body's Thoughts but Zephalinda's; she well knew it could be none
but Abdelhamar, and trembled lest he should have been discovered,
fearing his concealing his Recovery, and his disrespectful Carriage
towards her Father and her Husband, might have given room to Surmises
prejudicial to her Honour: but when watching him with her Eyes, and
seeing him get off unfollow'd, or observ'd, she then began afresh to
pine at Fate, who could render Abdelhamar Conqueror in every Action
that he undertook, and only vanquish'd when he fought in hopes of
gaining her."

The Prince and his bride return to their own country to receive the crown. By the most tender assiduities Albaraizor has almost succeeded in gaining the love of his wife when Abdelhamar again intrudes as ambassador to congratulate him on his coronation. Though her old love returns more strongly than ever, the Queen guards her honor well, and insists that her lover marry Selyma, a captive Princess. But that lady, stung by Abdelhamar's indifference, learns to hate him, and out of revenge persuades the King that his wife is unfaithful to him. An indiscreet letter from Abdelhamar confirms his suspicions. He orders both Queen and ambassador cast into prison and by his woes destroys the happiness of the whole court.

The passages relating the monarch's love and jealousy are described with a fulness entirely lacking in the tournament scene quoted above, and we may fairly infer that both writer and reader were more deeply interested in affairs of the heart than in feats of arms, however glorious. The emphasis given to love rather than to war in this tale is significant as a contrast to the opposite tendency in such romances of a century later as "Ivanhoe," in which a tournament scene very similar in outline to that in "The Arragonian Queen" is told with the greatest attention to warlike detail, while the love story, though not allowed to languish, is kept distinctly subordinate to the narrative of chivalric adventure. Mrs. Haywood, however, was too warm-blooded a creature to put aside the interests of the heart for the sake of a barbarous Gothic brawl, and too experienced a writer not to know that her greatest forte lay in painting the tender rather than the sterner passions.

In this respect she forms a decided contrast to Defoe, whose men and women are almost never startled out of their matter-of-fact attitude. His picaresque characters, though outwardly rogues or their female counterparts, have at bottom something of the dissenting parson and cool-headed, middle-aged man of business. Whatever else they may be, they are never love-sick. Passion is to them a questionable asset, and if they marry, they are like to have the matter over with in the course of half a paragraph. Eliza Haywood, however, possessed in excess the one gift that Defoe lacked. To the scribbling authoress love was the force that motivated all the world. Crude and conventional as are many of her repeated attempts to analyze the workings of a mind under the sway of soft desires, she nevertheless succeeded now and then in actuating her heroines with genuine emotion. Both romance and realism were woven into the intricate web of the Richardsonian novel, and the contribution of Mrs. Haywood deserves to be remembered if only because she supplied the one element missing in Defoe's masterpieces. Each writer in his day was considered paramount in his or her particular field.[19]

FOOTNOTES [1] _Les Héros de Roman_, 1664, circulated in MS. and printed in 1688 without the consent of the author. Not included in Boileau's _Works_ until 1713.

[2] The story of Tellisinda, who to avoid the reproach of barrenness imposes an adopted child upon her husband, but later bearing a son, is obliged to see a spurious heir inherit her own child's estate, was borrowed with slight changes from La Belle Assemblée, I, Day 5, and used in Mrs. Haywood's _Fruitless Enquiry_, (1727).

[3] _La Pierre philosophale des dames, ou les Caprices de l'amour et du destin_, by Louis Adrien Duperron de Castera, (1723), 12mo.

[4] _L'Illustre Parisienne_, (1679), variously attributed to Préchac and to Mme de Villedieu, had already been translated as _The Illustrious Parisian Maid, or The Secret Amours of a German Prince_, (1680). A synopsis is given by H.E. Chatenet, _Le Roman et les Romans d'une femme de lettres ... Mme de Villedieu_, (Paris, 1911), 253-9.

[5] I have not seen a copy of the book.

[6] Mrs. E. Griffith's comment on the work is typical of the tendency to moralize even the amusements of the day. See _A Collection of Novels_, (1777), II, 162. "The idea on which this piece is founded, has a good deal of merit in it; as tending to abate envy, and conciliate content; by shewing, in a variety of instances, that appearances are frequently fallacious; that perfect or permanent happiness is not the lot of mortal life; and that peace of mind and rational enjoyment are only to be found in bosoms free from guilt, and from intimate connection with the guilty."

[7] I have omitted two or three unessential stories in the analysis.

[8]