The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood | Page 6

Idalia, or the Self-abandon'd.[19] Written by Mrs. Eliza Haywood." During the next three years the five novels were issued singly by Chetwood with the help of other booksellers, usually Daniel Browne, Jr., and Samuel Chapman. This pair, or James Roberts, Chetwood's successor, published most of Mrs. Haywood's early writings. The staple of her output during the first decade of authorship was the short amatory romance like "Love in Excess" and the "exemplary novels" just mentioned. These exercises in fiction were evidently composed _currente calamo_, with little thought and less revision, for an eager and undiscriminating public. Possibly, as Mr. Gosse conjectures,[20] they were read chiefly by milliners and other women on the verge of literacy. But though persons of solid education avoided reading novels and eastern tales as they might the drinking of drams, it is certain that no one of scanty means could have afforded Mrs. Haywood's slender octavos at the price of one to three shillings. The Lady's Library ("Spectator" No. 37) containing beside numerous romances "A Book of Novels" and "The New Atalantis, with a Key to it," which last Lady Mary Montagu also enjoyed, and the dissolute country-gentleman's daughters ("Spectator" No. 128) who "read Volumes of Love-Letters and Romances to their Mother," a _ci-devant_ coquette, give us perhaps a more accurate idea of the woman novelist's public. Doubtless Mrs. Haywood's wares were known to the more frothy minds of the polite world and to the daughters of middle-class trading families, such as the sisters described in Defoe's "Religious Courtship," whose taste for fashionable plays and novels was soon to call the circulating library into being.
Beside the proceeds arising from the sale of her works, Mrs. Haywood evidently expected and sometimes received the present of a guinea or so in return for a dedication. Though patrons were not lacking for her numerous works, it does not appear that her use of their names was always authorized. In putting "The Arragonian Queen" under the protection of Lady Frances Lumley, in fact, the author confessed that she had not the happiness of being known to the object of her praise, but wished to be the first to felicitate her publicly upon her nuptials. We may be sure that the offering of "Frederick, Duke of Brunswick- Lunenburgh" to the hero's namesake, Frederick, Prince of Wales, was both unsanctioned and unacknowledged. Sometimes, however, the writer's language implies that she had already experienced the bounty of her patron, while in the case of the novel dedicated to Sir Richard Steele at a time when his health and credit were fast giving way, Eliza can hardly be accused of interested motives. Apparently sincere, too, though addressed to a wealthy widow, was the tribute to Lady Elizabeth Germain prefixed to "The Fruitless Enquiry"; and at least one other of Mrs. Haywood's productions is known to have been in Lady Betty's library. But these instances are decidedly exceptional. Usually the needy novelist's dedications were made up of servile adulation and barefaced begging. With considerable skill in choosing a favorable moment she directed a stream of panegyric upon William Yonge (later Sir) within two months after his appointment as one of the commissioners of the treasury in Great Britain. Soon after Sir Thomas Lombe was made a knight, the wife of that rich silk weaver had the pleasure of seeing her virtues and her new title in print. And most remarkable of all, Lady Elizabeth Henley, who eloped with a rake early in 1728, received Mrs. Haywood's congratulations upon the event in the dedication of "The Agreeable Caledonian," published in June, though if we may trust Mrs. Delany's account of the matter, the bride must already have had time for repentance. Even grief, the specialist in the study of the passions knew, might loosen the purse strings, and accordingly she took the liberty to condole with Col. Stanley upon the loss of his wife while entreating his favor for "The Masqueraders." But of all her dedications those addressed to her own sex were the most melting, and from their frequency were evidently the most fruitful.
The income derived from patronage, however, was at best uncertain and necessitated many applications. To the public, moreover, a novel meant nothing if not something new. Eliza Haywood's productiveness, therefore, was enormous. When she had settled to her work, the authoress could produce little pieces, ranging from sixty to nearly two hundred pages in length, with extraordinary rapidity. In 1724, for instance, a year of tremendous activity, she rushed into print no less than ten original romances, beside translating half of a lengthy French work, "La Belle Assembl��e" by Mme de Gomez. At this time, too, her celebrity had become so great that "The Prude, a Novel, written by a Young Lady" was dedicated to her, just as Mrs. Hearne at the