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

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 of the Heart, and attain the Dominion over Reason....
"With this Experience, added to a Genius tolerably extensive, and an Education more liberal than is ordinarily allowed to Persons of my Sex, I flatter'd myself that it might be in my Power to be in some measure both useful and entertaining to the Publick."
A less favorable glimpse of the authoress and her activities is afforded by a notice of a questionable publication called "A Letter from H--- G---