The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood | Page 9

she became a journalist or turned her energies toward other means of
making a livelihood, no evidence of the fact has yet been discovered. It
is possible that (to use the current euphemism) 'the necessity of her
affairs may have obliged her to leave London and even England until
creditors became less insistent. There can be little doubt that Mrs.
Haywood visited the Continent at least once, but the time of her going
is uncertain.[29]
When she renewed her literary activity in 1742 with a translation of "La
Paysanne Parvenue" by the Chevalier de Mouhy, Mrs. Haywood did
not depend entirely upon her pen for support. A notice at the end of the
first volume of "The Virtuous Villager, or Virgin's Victory," as her
work was called, advertised "new books sold by Eliza Haywood,
Publisher, at the Sign of Fame in Covent Garden." Her list of
publications was not extensive, containing, in fact, only two items: I.
"The Busy-Body; or Successful Spy; being the entertaining History of
Mons. Bigand ... The whole containing great Variety of Adventures,
equally instructive and diverting," and II. "Anti-Pamela, or Feign'd
Innocence detected, in a Series of Syrena's Adventures: A Narrative
which has really its Foundation in Truth and Nature ... Publish'd as a
necessary Caution to all young Gentlemen. The Second Edition."[30]
Mrs. Haywood's venture as a publisher was transitory, for we hear no
more of it. But taken together with a letter from her to Sir Hans
Sloane,[31] recommending certain volumes of poems that no
gentleman's library ought to be without, the bookselling enterprise
shows that the novelist had more strings than one to her bow.
By one expedient or another Mrs. Haywood managed to exist fourteen
years longer and during that time wrote the best remembered of her
works. Copy from her pen supplied her publisher, Thomas Gardner,
with a succession of novels modeled on the French fiction of Marivaux
and De Mouhy, with periodical essays reminiscent of Addison, with
moral letters, and with conduct books of a nondescript but popular sort.
The hard-worked authoress even achieved a new reputation on the
success of her "Fortunate Foundlings" (1744), "Female Spectator"

(1744-6), and her most ambitious novel, "The History of Miss Betsy
Thoughtless" (1751). The productions known to be hers do not
certainly represent the entire output of her industry during this period,
for since "The Dunciad" her writing had been almost invariably
anonymous. One or two equivocal bits of secret history and
scandal-mongering may probably be attributed to her at the very time
when in "Epistles for the Ladies" (1749-50) she was advocating
sobriety, religion, and morality. These suspected lapses into her old
habits should serve as seasoning to the statement of the "Biographia
Dramatica" that Eliza Haywood was "in mature age, remarkable for the
most rigid and scrupulous decorum, delicacy, and prudence, both with
respect to her conduct and conversation." If she was not too old a dog
to learn new tricks, she at least did not forget her old ones. Of her
circumstances during her last years little can be discovered. "The
Female Spectator," in emulation of its famous model, commences with
a pen-portrait of the writer, which though not intended as an accurate
picture, certainly contains no flattering lines. It shows the essayist both
conscious of the faults of her youth and willing to make capital out of
them.
"As a Proof of my Sincerity, I shall, in the first place, assure him [the
reader], that for my own
Part I never was a Beauty, and am now
very far from being young; (a Confession he will find few of my Sex
ready to make): I shall also acknowledge that I have run through as
many Scenes of Vanity and Folly as the greatest Coquet of them all.--
Dress, Equipage, and Flattery were the Idols of my Heart.--I should
have thought that Day lost, which did not present me with some new
Opportunity of shewing myself.--My Life, for some Years, was a
continued Round of what I then called Pleasure, and my whole Time
engross'd by a Hurry of promiscuous Diversions.--But whatever
Inconveniences such a manner of Conduct has brought upon myself, I
have this Consolation, to think that the Publick may reap some Benefit
from it:--The Company I kept was not, indeed, always so well chosen
as it ought to have been, for the sake of my own Interest or Reputation;
but then it was general, and by Consequence furnished me, not only
with the Knowledge of many Occurrences, which otherwise I had been

ignorant of, but also enabled me ...to see into the most secret Springs
which gave rise to the Actions I had either heard, or been Witness
of--to judge of the various Passions of the Human Mind, and
distinguish those imperceptible Degrees by which they become Masters