The second half of the century builds upon and extends the new tendencies which have become apparent in the first half. The themes of scandal and intrigue continue to be popular. Professionalism, and the financial need which underlies it, becomes even more pronounced. A new but related development is the appearance of several works whose authors are connected primarily with the theatre. But perhaps the most striking aspect of eighteenth century autobiography is its relationship to the growth of fiction. In the early half of the century several writers disguise their characters with romance names and place their stories in exotic settings. After 1750, the influence of the great novelists of the mid-century--Fielding, Sterne, and especially Richardson--becomes increasingly evident, and the autobiography, like the novel, becomes a medium for the cultivation of sensibility.

In no instance are novel and autobiography more thoroughly intertwined than that of the Viscountess Frances Anne Vane; surely her "Memoirs of a Lady of Quality"¹ are among the oddest autobiographical documents of the century. These memoirs were compiled by Lady Vane--possibly, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, with the aid of Dr. John Shebbeare²--and inserted by Smollett as chapter 88 in Peregrine Pickle, a service for which she allegedly paid him. The run to some length, and as Stauffer observes, "her amazingly delicate psychological--or psychopathic--analyses surpass anything that is recorded for her gallant listener Peregrine Pickle."³ They are about as well integrated into the narrative as such digressions usually are in eighteenth century novels, but nonetheless we are treated to a fictional interaction between the fictional Peregrine and the real author; Peregrine contemplates making love to her, but concludes that

. . . unless Lady _____ could engross his whole love, time and attention, he foresaw that it would be impossible for him to support the passion which he might have the good fortune to inspire. He was, moreover, deterred from declaring his love, by the fate of her former admirers, who seemed to have been wound up to a degree of enthusiasm, that looked more like the effect of enchantment, than the inspiration of human attractions; an ecstasy of passion which he durst not venture to undergo. (p. 142)

The work focuses most of its attention upon love intrigues, to the extent that it becomes almost a parody. (Indeed, the works which most nearly resemble this one are primarily fictional rather than authentic autobiography.) Her opening paragraph gives a fairly accurate picture of what is to follow:

By the circumstances of the story which I am going to relate, you will be convinced of my candour, while you are informed of my indescretion. You will be enabled, I hope, to perceive, that, howsoever my head may have erred, my heart hath always been uncorrupted, and that I have been unhappy, because I loved, and was a woman. (p. 133)

After a brief description of her childhood, in which she likens her disposition to that of Shakespeare’s Henry V, she plunges into her entrance at Bath--a fitting beginning since life and love seem to be virtually synonymous. When she marries her first husband, a love match whose bliss was terminated only by his early death, she bemoans the sorrow which her father suffered because of her undutiful behavior, but in justification utters what may aptly serve as her credo: "love, where he reigns in full empire, is altogether irresistible, surmounts every difficulty, and swallows up all other considerations" (p. 40).

Upon the death of her first husband, she is persuaded for financial reasons to marry a man whom she finds disgusting and contemptible; to boot he is impotent:

He had, about nine months after our marriage, desired that we might sleep in separate beds, and gave a very whimsical reason for this proposal. He said, the immensity of his love deprived him of the power of gratification, and that some commerce with an object, to which his heart was not attached, might, by diminishing the transports of his spirits, recompose his nerves, and enable him to enjoy the fruits of his good fortune.

You may be sure I made no objection to this plan, which was immediately put into execution. He made his addresses to a nymph of Drury Lane, whose name, as he told me, was Mrs. Rock. She made a shift to extract some money from her patient, but his infirmity was beyond the power of her art. . . . (pp. 58-59)

For a woman to whom love is paramount and who thinks "nothing else worth living for" (p. 135), such a situation is clearly intolerable, and she is quickly precipitated into a series of affairs. Her descriptions of her mental states demonstrate that the subtlety and precision which the French had achieved in analyzing emotion (and in cultivating it) have been naturalized by this point in English:

. . . nothing was wanting to my happiness, but the one thing to me the most needful--I mean the enchanting tenderness and delightful enthusiasm of love. Lord B____’s heart, I believe, felt the soft impressions; and, for my own part, I loved him with the most faithful affection. It is not enough to say I wished him well; I had the most delicate, the most genuine esteem for his virtue; I had an intimate regard and anxiety for his interest; and felt for him as if he had been my own son. But still there was a vacancy in my heart; there was not that fervour, that transport, that ecstasy of passion which I had formerly known. . . . (p. 87)

And indeed, to have a notion of my passion for that man, you must first have loved as I did. But, through a strange caprice, I broke off the correspondence, out of apprehension that he would forsake me again. From his past conduct I dreaded what might happen; and the remembrance of what I had undergone by his inconstancy, filled my imagination with such horror, that I could not endure the shocking prospect, and prematurely plunged myself into the danger, rather than endure the terrors of expectation. (p. 91)

Clearly the interest in how she feels is greater than in the object of these feelings.

Stauffer judges the author of what he calls these "shocking Memoirs" rather harshly: "Her cold sneers at her husband’s sufferings and shame, her sadism and nymphomania are obvious enough."⁴ Without saying anything in extenuation of this verdict, we may speculate whether her perverse cruelty may have had its roots in the tensions between what marriage was supposed to be, a union of two people perfectly in tune with one another (as in her first marriage, made in the face of parental objections), and what it often was, a business arrangement based largely upon financial considerations (as in her second marriage). Lady Vane pragmatically accepts this disjunction between love and marriage; when one of her lovers negotiates a marriage without her knowledge, she replies to the protests of a mutual acquaintance that she has been ill-treated:

I told him that I was of a different opinion; that it was not only just, but expedient, that a young man of Mr. _____’s fortune should think of making some alliance to strengthen and support the interest of his family; and that I had nothing to accuse him of but his letting me remain so long in ignorance of his intention. (p. 137)

Such a solidly institutionalized social schizophrenia could hardly fail to provoke behavior which was less than human; and Lady Vane, who at least preserved a quasi-marital devotion and fidelity to each lover for the duration of the liaison, was hardly the worst offender which the contemporary mores produced. Another factor which undoubtedly contributed to the formation of Lady Vane’s character was the seeming dearth of other interests and activities to occupy her time. Except for a few "avocations"--generally hunting--she and her lovers seem to have little else to do, and indeed seem to have the leisure and means to chase all over the continent in pursuit of an amour, if necessary.

The overall effect which this narrative produces is one of sadness rather than titillation. The underlying emptiness of the author’s life is ultimately rather pathetic: when she is young she can afford the luxury of expatiating on the evils of jealousy, but towards the end, when she is deeply involved with a younger man, she herself becomes its victim. Such is the fate of a woman who accepts the basically male view of how men and women are and who has never been encouraged to develop any real interests of her own.

Charlotte Charke Sacheverel ( -1760) is one of the most attractive and entertaining of the eighteenth-century female autobiographers. She was the daughter of Colley Cibber, theatre impresario, poet laureate, and protagonist of The Dunciad; she seems to have inherited a good deal of his charm, vivacity, recklessness, and absurdity, despite the seemingly irreconcilable breach that, to Charlotte Charke’s sorrow, separated father and daughter.

A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, Daughter of Colley Cibber⁵ was published serially, in eight parts, in 1755. Like many eighteenth century autobiographies, the publication process permitted the work to be shaped and modified by audience feedback:

. . . I . . . must now beg Leave to apologize for swelling out my Numbers with my own History, which was originally designed to have consisted only of a short Sketch of my strange Life: But, on the Appearance of the first Number, I was enjoin’d (nay ’twas insisted on) by many, that if ’twas possible for me to enlarge the Account of myself to a Pocket Volume, I should do it. (p. 142)

She opens her account with a dedication to herself, full of humorous and ironical self-praise, which sets the tone for the narrative; the following passage is typical:

Your exquisite Taste in Building must not be ommitted: The magnificant airy Castles, for which you daily drew out Plans without Foundation, must, could they have been distinguishable to Sight, long ere this have darken’d all the lower World. . . . (p. 13)

She then proceeds to one of her principal themes, that of her own oddity:

As I have promis’d to give some Account of my UNACCOUNTABLE LIFE, I shall no longer detain my Readers in respect to my Book, but satisfy a Curiosity which has long subsisted in the Minds of many: And, I believe, they will own, when they know my History, if Oddity can plead any Right to Surprise and Astonishment, I may positively claim a Title to be shewn among the Wonders of Ages past, and those to come. Nor will I, to escape a Laugh, even at my own Expence, deprive my Readers of that pleasing Satisfaction, or conceal any Error, which I now rather sigh to reflect on; but formerly, thro’ too much Vacancy of Thought, might be idle enough rather to justify than condemn. (pp. 16-17)

Her personal eccentricity is reflected in her language, as when she calls an unsuccessful benefit a "Malefit" (p. 192), or as when she tells how she could not keep from laughing during a performance at a suggestion from a man in the audience that she mix in speeches from another play: "the Strangeness of his Fancy had such an Effect on my risible Faculties, I thought I should never close my Mouth again in the least Degree of Seriosity" (p. 168). It even appears in the structure of the book; she ends with a summary, remarking:

’Tis generally the Rule to put the Summary of Books of this Kind at the Beginning, but as I have, through the whole Course of my Life, acted in Contradiction to all Points of Regularity, beg to be indulged in a whimsical Conclusion of my Narrative, by introducing that last, which I will allow should have been first. (p. 215)

This pose of ostentatious peculiarity should not mislead the reader into failing to take her seriously. She is tough, and her behavior and responses have a convincing authenticity which transcends the mores and traditions of the society which engendered her. Her education, she claims, was like that which might be given to a boy, which may account for her relative freedom from the stereotyped femininity which little girls were trained to exhibit:

. . . my Education was not only a genteel, but in Fact a liberal one, and such indeed as might have been sufficient for a Son instead of a Daughter; I must beg Leave to add, that I was never made much acquainted with that necessary Utensil which forms the houswifery Part of a young Lady’s Education, call’d a Needle; which I handle with the same clumsey Awkardness a Monkey does a Kitten, and am equally capable of using the one, as Pug is of nursing the other. (p. 19)

As a child she learns to ride, garden, and use firearms, and she even sets up for a time as a doctor dispensing free drugs to the local poor--leaving her father to pay the bill. Her marriage to Richard Charke is based on infatuation:

. . . I, as foolish young Girls are apt to be too credulous, believed his Passion the Result of real Love, which indeed was only Interest. His Affairs being in a very desperate Condition, he thought it no bad Scheme to endeavour at being Mr. Cibber’s Son-in-Law. . . . (p. 45)

But when she discovers his philandering, she does not repine or blame herself, but rather loses interest in him as unworthy of her devotion: "I had, indeed, too often very shocking Confirmations of my Suspicions, which made me at last grow quite indifferent; nor can I avoid confessing, that Indifference was strongly attended with Contempt" (pp. 47-48). She spends many years living as a man and wearing men’s clothing, in which guise an heiress falls in love with her. She develops an elaborate puppet show which is her chief claim to fame today. She experiences and describes an emotion which women of the period seldom admit to in autobiography--sheer, unmitigated anger. For example, she reacts strenuously to a rumor-monger’s tale that she had robbed her father at gunpoint:

A likely Story, that my Father and his Servants were all so intimidated, had it been true, as not to have been able to withstand a single stout Highwayman, much more a Female, and his own Daughter too! However, the Story soon reached my Ear, which did not more enrage me on my own Account, than the impudent, ridiculous Picture the Scoundrel had drawn of my Father, in this supposed horrid Scene. The Recital threw me into such an agonizing Rage, I did not recover it for a Month; but, the next Evening, I had the Satisfaction of being designedly placed where this Villain was to be, and, concealed behind a Screen, heard the Lye retold from his own Mouth.

He had no sooner ended, than I rushed from my Covert, and, being armed with a thick oaken Plank, knocked him down, without speaking a Word to him; and, had I not been happily prevented should, without the least Remorse, have killed him on the Spot. I had not Breath enough to enquire into the Cause of his barbarous Falshood, but others who were less concerned than myself, did it for me; and the only reason he assigned for his saying it, was He meant it as a Joke, which considerably added to the Vehemence of my Rage: But I had the Joy of seeing him well caned, and obliged to ask my Pardon on his knees--Poor Satisfaction for so manifest an Injury! (p. 96)

Her anger and frustration at being imprisoned are also expressed vehemently:

Rage and Indignation having wrought such an Effect on my Mind, it threw me almost into a Frenzy; and arose to such a Height, that I very cordially desired my Fellow-Prisoners would give me Leave to cut their Throats, with a faithful Promise to do the same by my own, in Case we were doomed to remain there after the Tryal. (p. 171)

Here is not the soul-shriveling bitterness of a Laetitia Pilkington, but rather a frank and direct sense of outrage.

Not that she ever breaks through to a clear-cut notion of sexual equality. Even this forthright woman has absorbed the traditional ideas of women’s secondary status; of her geography lessons, for example, she remarks that "tho’ I know it to be a most useful and pleasing Science, I cannot think it was altogether necessary for a Female" (p. 26). And while she is in some respects remarkably free of the self-hatred which women in Western society have often manifested in one way or another, her tendency to trivialize herself may perhaps be seen as self-demeaning.⁶ Still, her bumptiousness, her unwillingness to apologize for herself, and her sense of herself as having a career set her apart from her more traditionally-oriented contemporaries.

Catherine Yeo Jemmat, daughter of a naval officer in Plymouth, claimed self-justification as her motive for writing her Memoirs:⁷

To arraign my words, thoughts, and actions, with the minutest truth, at the tribunal of publick justice, is one principal inducement to my resigning the needle for the pen. If from the series of indisputable facts here set forth, I am deemed a wilful and incorrigible offender, I can expect little lenity; but if it shall appear upon a candid summing up of the whole, that a thousand natural, as well as accidental incidents, gave birth to the long train of my misfortunes, perhaps I may find even strangers, more sensible of the "compunctious visitings of nature," in my favour, than I have yet been able to awaken in the bosoms of my kindred. (I, p. 3)

Be that as it may, the long subscription list at the head of her two-volume production suggests that financial need may have played its part. And the desire to entertain could not have been more consciously embraced; she maintains a lively, vivid manner of writing and frequently introduces examples of her own rather uninspired verse. As an apology, indeed, it is as weak as or weaker than such works usually are; most of her exploits are trivial enough, but if her autobiography represents the utmost she can say in her own defense, the reader may be inclined to consider the justice of her relatives’ position, given their assumptions about morality.

Catherine Jemmat has a dry, ironical style; nowhere is it more evident than in her description of her father:

I cannot say whether it was for want of ambition to reap laurels, or want of an opportunity to distinguish himself, that my father passed many years in the service, without attaining glory from any particular action; nor do I think it any honour to memory, that he was at last raised to the rank of a half-pay Admiral; as those compliments are frequently paid by the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty, to make room for junior officers, who, perhaps, may have been born under a more auspicious planet than their seniors.

This I can venture to alledge in favour of his memory; that whatever might be deficient in his character as a commander on the liquid element, he was a finish’d tar in his own house; a bashaw, whose single nod of disapprotion [sic] struck terror into the whole family. (I, pp. 4-5)

She is five when her mother dies; her father, who has been at sea, comes rushing back distraught and even demands the disinterment of the body. What follows upon this show of grief is best told by the author:

Richard the Third, when he has conquered the scruples of Lady Anne, and persuaded her to marry the butcher of her husband, in the person of himself, says,

"Thus mourn’d the dame of Ephesus her lover,

"And thus the soldier fir’d with martial glory,

"Told his fond tale, and was a thriving woer."

Shakespeare has taken another occasion to depreciate our sex, where one of the courtiers expressing his admiration at this marriage says, "What do I see?" It is immediately answered, "Why you see a woman."

Now should I tell you that this gentleman [her father] married again in seven years after, a prudent motherly woman, to look after his house, and manage the education of his children; you’d say, perhaps, Well he mourned long enough, and it was proper he should have a helpmate.

But when I represent to you in nine weeks after, married to a giggling girl of nineteen; should you apply to me the interrogation, What do I see? I should naturally reply, Why you see a man. (I, pp. 8-10)

Her stepmother in short order bears five children, four of whom die; of the fifth the author remarks that "had the worthy captain my half-brother compleated the number of the deceas’d, the world and myself might well have borne the loss with Christian patience and resignation" (I, p. 11). She can never resist an opportunity for digressing from her narrative to excoriate her relatives.

She describes herself as a precocious and high-spirited child, "endow’d with a quick genius, and a propensity to learn whatever was within the reach of my capacity" (I, p. 16). As she grows older, she manages to win admirers despite her lack of beauty:

With regard to my person, I never could boast of it; for I was never a beauty. I was what you might call a comely black girl with a blooming country complexion; I was remarkable indeed for an easy, obliging disposition, which perhaps was the only attraction of the many addresses I was afterwards honoured with. (I, p. 17)

She then launches into a description of a series of flirtations which are facilitated by various chambermaids and impeded by her strict father. The lengthiest of these amours involves her infatuation with a Mr. B. They are eventually forced to separate but agree to maintain a correspondence. She is sensitive to stylistic nuances and their implications, and his letter, when it finally arrives, seems to her to be lacking in fervor; it contains "all the tenderness of an affectionate husband, blended with all the flowers of refined elocution; yet notwithstanding there was a certain formality in the style that plainly indicated a decrease of fondness on his part" (I, p. 104). Upset, she takes his letter to bed with her and has a dream. The significant dream is, of course, a common characteristic of religious autobiography; here there is a religious element, but it is used for rather different ends:

I imagined myself coming from church, and that I was accosted on the way by an old gentleman, who asked me if I chose to take a survey of the goods that were to be sold by auction. . . . the first object he pointed out to me was a clock-case, I opened the door and saw Mr. B standing within dressed in blue and gold; I gave him a pull to draw him out, and that instant his body seemed to shrink through the cloaths, which were still obvious to my sight. . . . he . . . then led me into another apartment, where I discovered a coffin placed on two stools, and upon lifting the lid perceived it to be Mr. B.

But still I was not terrified.--I was contemplating the body with earnestness, when suddenly a snake jumped from it, twisted round my arm, and stung me; upon this I shrieked out and awoke. . . . (I, pp. 107-8)

At about this point, she begins to wonder about the impression such tales may be making on the reader:

It should seem by what I have been writing, that these were the memoirs of a disappointed old maiden, who to extort an opinion that she was once agreeable, tells you the variety of conquests she has made. . . . (I, p. 114)

But, she concludes, why shouldn’t her true story be as entertaining as those of fictional heroines? And indeed, she is surely indebted to the novel for her ability to depict scenes in a lively manner. The following passage, in which an old man attempts to seduce her, and, when that fails, to rape her, is a good example:

The old fox, imagining that spirits were on his part wanting, to complete his diabolical scheme, drank two or three bumpers successively, and used all the language he was master of to entice me to follow his example; but maugre all his efforts, I peremptorily refused it, and desired to go home. My pretty miss, said he, sure you can’t be in a hurry, you are with the only man that idolizes your beauty and your merit; my whole fortune, which is not inconsiderable, I’ll throw at your feet; you shall vie in grandeur with any princess in Christendom, if you will but indulge the glowing transports of an amorous man--and should a child come--

Here I interrupted him, with a What does the monster mean? He indeed, like the ass imitating the lap dog, ran into the most ridiculous absurdities, which would scarcely have been sufferable in a youth of nineteen. I attempted to leave the room--he intercepted me, kneeled, wept, and swore; but in short, had so much the resemblance of an old frantic baboon, that I could not avoid a hearty fit of laughter.

As he lay sprawling on the floor, and creeping after me like an abject spaniel, he had the consummate assurance to lay hold of one of my legs. I immediately withdrew it, and with the other gave him so smart a kick on the nose, that the sanguine current flowed copiously from it, and I embraced that opportunity of delivering myself from his clutches, by slipping down stairs. (I, pp. 124-26)

As she reaches the end of volume I, she turns to the subject of her marriage:

I am now going to enter upon the particulars of an area in my life, which may seem as unaccountable to the reader, as it was unfortunate in its consequences to me, namely my marriage with Mr. Jemmat, whose name I have the misfortune to bear. (I, p. 157)

Mr. Jemmat, the keeper of a mercer’s shop in Plymouth, misrepresents his solvency; and so, to escape from the increasing onerousness of her relationship with her father, she agrees to marry him although she is not greatly attracted to him. She is soon punished for this compromise, for her husband proves to be extremely jealous and inclined to drink. This situation leads to such scenes as the following Fielding-esque farce, which took place when she and her husband were guests in the S. household:

About two o’clock in the morning he returned, but so disordered with liquor, that he was scarce able to speak, and being incapable of undressing himself, I performed that office for him as well as I had power to do, and put him into bed;--he had not been there long, when he either was, or feigned himself to be in convulsion fits; this very much terrified me, as I had no creature to give me any assistance. I recollected just that moment, that Mr. S’s niece lay but in the opposite room; I therefore run in without a candle, and drew back the curtain with some emotion, when, to my infinite surprise, I heard the parson’s voice cry, who’s there? what’s the matter; I was retiring with precipitation to my own room, when behold, I met the gentleman whom I left in fits, with the candle in his hand, and in his shirt. Well, madam, said he, I find you know the ways of this house, I am now satisfied. I explained the matter to him so as to leave no hinge to hang a doubt on,--but he was sullen, and only answered; pray, madam, come to bed.

The next morning at breakfast I was heartily bantered by Mr. S’s family and the clergyman for my mistake, which Mr. S. said was very easily accounted for, as his niece had always slept in that room, but resigned it to the curate, who had accommodated Mr. Jemmat and me with his. (II, pp. 28-30)

She suffers much abuse from his drunken brawling:

. . . he abused every body who came in his way; nor were his maker or his king exempted from the rancour of his tongue.

How then must it fare with his poor wife, who was soon after brought to bed of a daughter? His behaviour to me at that season, when even brutes and savages shew some marks of tenderness to the suffering female, was such that humanity would blush at the repetition of;--in short, it threw me into a violent child-bed fever; in which I was delirious for some weeks, and should have been utterly lost, but that I found in strangers what I might reasonably have expected in a husband. (II, pp. 55-56)

It is in this situation that we leave her as her account draws to a close.

For some reason Catherine Jemmat has been buried in obscurity, although her memoirs are highly readable and amusing. It is difficult to explain the almost total neglect of an author who deserves to take her place alongside of Laetitia Pilkington, Con Phillips, Frances Ann Vane, George Anne Bellamy, Elizabeth Gooch, and Mary Robinson, of whom most scholars of eighteenth-century literature have at least heard. Like them, she builds out of the wreckage of her social transgressions an attractive (and let us hope profitable) edifice.

The book-length (134 pages) autobiography⁸ of Margaret Brindley Lucas (1701-69) is an attractive and well-written Quaker autobiography. Though her temporal and spiritual experiences do not particularly set her apart from other Quakers, they are recounted in such a way as to make us sense that the author was a living breathing human being.

"I was born," she tells us,

. . . in the year 1701, in Fleetstreet, London; my father’s name was James Brindley, who kept a china shop at the corner of Fetterlane. I was the youngest of fourteen children, and my mother died when I was one year and a half old; after which my father removed to Lambeth, to the house called Vauxhall, where he erected a pothouse; there my father married a second wife, who, dying before him, left two children; my father himself died when I was about seven years old, leaving six orphans, two of them younger than myself. (p. 1)

So she became the responsibility of an uncle, in whose house she was "brought . . . up strictly in the protestant religion" (p. 2). She received the education thought appropriate to a young woman:

. . . my uncle thought proper to board me at school. . . . I was then thought dextrous at my needle beyond most of my years; and indeed I have observed in myself, that from a child there seemed fit for impression and improvement. (p. 4)

When she reaches her teens, she has masters to teach her writing, pastry-making, singing, and dancing, the last of which "being a diversion which (as I was very agile) they said I was fit for, and indeed it was an amusement I was very fond of" (p. 8).

Some of her thoughts were of more sober matters, however, and, thinking about the clergy, she

. . . concluded they had a peculiar advantage in the mysteries of divine things, and a more thorough knowledge of the Lord, and his ways to man; often saying to myself, and others, if I had been a boy I would have been of their cloth (and brought up, as my brother was designed by my father to have been, at the University). (pp. 9-10)

When her uncle moved to a larger house just opposite a churchyard, she frequently witnessed burials and found herself pondering the subject of death:

As I lived so near, I often waited upon the corpse to the grave, musing in myself how it must be with the deceased in the hour of death; for, though I had often heard that sentence pronounced; by the priest, in which it is said, "We commit the body to the ground, (note) in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life;" yet, upon the strictest review, I could not find I had any evidence of that hope abiding in me. (p. 12)

Little by little we see her drawing away from the formal religion in which she was raised; she begins to suspect tradition and to believe that faith is "the immediate gift of God" (p. 16).

When she is eighteen, her uncle buys her a shop, and before the previous owner vacates the premises she goes in to learn the trade. The previous owner, S. Taylor, is, as it happens, a Quaker, and her uncle has "so good an opinion of the Quakers, that he left the appraising of the goods entirely to her" (p. 19). Her uncle’s good opinion of the Quakers, however, does not include acceptance of his niece’s growing sympathy for that sect. He becomes worried and sends for some clergymen who attempt to dissuade her. Many of the misconceptions which were then current about Quakers emerge in the following conversation which she had with one of them:

Why, said he, they deny the Scriptures! I said, if they do, I promise you I will never own them, but I know they do, I promise you I will never own them, but I know they do not. Why then, said he, they wrest them to their own destruction, and they deny baptism. I said they do of water, but they preach a baptism. Yes, said he, and a stronge one too; put your finger into that fire, a fire being in the room, and see how you can bear that baptism. This filled my mind with indignation, and I said, no, I scorn it; for I believe they no more mean elementary fire, than the baptism of elementary water. At this time I may conclude that neither he nor I knew that mysterious baptism, which my soul has at times since experienced. (pp. 29-30)

She is subjected to great abuse by her acquaintances:

The uneasiness of our family was now no longer a secret, my intimates, one after another. [sic] would accost me by the name of flat-cap, friend; or deridingly ask, does the spirit move thee? with which, and such other mockeries, I must say my natural inclination was much buffetted, and now the storm began to be more boisterous, both within and without. . . . (p. 31)

Her uncle, drunk, threatens to "bereave me of my life" (p. 37) if she continues to attend meetings.

Finally a major crisis develops in the reform of her aunt’s hysterical opposition. She feels called upon to "use the plain language" (p. 65), and the first person she meets after coming to this decision is her aunt, who becomes extremely incensed. After this she tries to avoid the locution with her aunt, but one time when she has called her aunt ‘thou’:

. . . it so inflamed her, that, as there stood a fire-shovel in her way, she took it up, and struck at me. . . . she often declared, she believed it was no more sin to kill me than a dog. (p. 66)

Another time her aunt flings a brass candlestick at her. Finally she begins to fear "my aunt’s going quite distracted" (p. 70). Indeed, her aunt’s behavior becomes increasingly bizarre:

One market-day, she followed me as I went behind the counter, and kept me there for some hours; though I desired her to set me go, yet she would not; nor did I chuse to put her away, she saying, she would hear my language today. . . . When any one came into the shop, she told them, I was the new-made Quaker; and filled those who were strangers to her with admiration of us both; and I may say, I blushed as much for her as for myself. Each time she thus exposed me, she held me by the left arm, which was next to her; and when I used the plain language she pinched me very bad. . . . (pp. 72-73)

Her aunt persists until her arm is so swollen that it requires medical attention. Her aunt repeatedly attacks her:

My soul now fled to the Almighty for refuge, and I sat before her a witness of her frenzical behavior, with more solidity and composure than she expected. At last, she came to me, and said, I am mad; thou, thou has driven me mad! And I am mad! I was surprised to hear her say so, and thought there was some hopes for me, as she had yet so much reason left as to tell me of the thing she knew I was so afraid of. (p. 93)

She bears up under this persecution and eventually is relieved. At the age of twenty-four she is married, a circumstance which seems to persuade her relatives to relent. And so at last she is permitted an interval of peace:

I may now conclude my narrative thus far, with truly saying, how blessed in my situation was I; having a loving, kind, and tender husband; our lawful endeavours made prosperous; the affections of my relatives restored; and above all, the blessing of the Almighty sanctifying these enjoyments to my soul. . . . (p. 113)

She then turns to a new crisis, her calling to preach:

To introduce this heavy relation, I must go back to my childhood, and say, that the first time I ever heard a woman preach, from a prejudice imbibed from my companions, and, probably, an aversion in my own nature, I thought it very ridiculous, and the oftener I had opportunities to see it, the more I secretly despised it. (p. 115)

Her strong sense that she has been chosen for this work creates an intense conflict with her deeply ingrained acceptance of the social system which does not permit women to engage in such activities. Again she suffers great distress, and for a while prefers the idea of death to the prospect of preaching. It is only after this turmoil is resolved that she is able to achieve inner peace once again. Here her narrative draws to a close.

The art of this account lies in its author’s ability to portray the gradual development of her faith and the realities of her sufferings for it. In place of a guilt-ridden childhood, by now practically a Quaker formula, she gives us a growing thoughtfulness as she matures and sifts the evidence. The utter lack of resentment with which she accepts the unthinkableness of her ever being a clergyman, despite her youthful conviction that her talents lie in that direction, subtly anticipates her later resistance to the calling to become a Quaker preacher, in sharp contrast to the heavy-handed premonitions that we frequently find in descriptions of the pre-conversion years in Quaker autobiography. In place of the self-righteous attitude which zealots often take towards their persecutors, Margaret Lucas reveals a profound sympathy with her uncle and aunt, whom she loves and whose good intentions she recognizes and respects. This book demonstrates that in capable hands even so rigid a form as Quaker autobiography does not have to become completely fossilized.

The Life and Spiritual Sufferings of that Faithful Servant of Christ, Jane Hoskens⁹ is a fairly typical Quaker autobiography, in most ways similar to those examined in the seventeenth century, although reflecting some social changes--travel to America, for example, has become less of a heroic undertaking. It runs to thirty-one closely printed pages and was published in 1771, though it was probably written rather earlier; the author was born in 1693/94.

Like Elizabeth Ashbridge, Jane Hoskens traveled to America as a young woman, where she was converted to Quakerism, was indentured for a period, and spent time as a teacher. There, however, the resemblances end, for the personalities of the two women and their attitudes towards what has happened to them are very different. It is a tribute to Elizabeth Ashbridge’s independence and originality to compare these two treatments of similar material.

Jane Hoskens’ childhood is like that of most of the Quaker women we have seen, though rather less hounded with guilt than is usual:

I was born in London, the 3rd day of the 1st month, in the year 1693-94, of religious parents, and by them strictly educated in the profession of the church of England, so called; who, according to the best of their understanding, endeavoured to inculcate into my mind the knowledge of a divine being, and how necessary it was for all professing christianity, to live in fear of God: But this good advice I too often slighted, as likewise the blessed reproofs of the holy spirit of Christ in my soul; though I was but young, I was, through mercy, preserved from the commission of gross evils; yet being of a cheerful disposition, and having a turn to musick and singing, I was much delighted therewith, and was thereby led into unprofitable company, all which had a tendency to lead my mind from GOD, for which strong convictions followed me as a swift witness against sin, but he who had compassion on me from the days of my infancy, was pleased in the 16th year of my age, to visit me with a sore fit of sickness, nigh unto death. . . . (p. 3)

Her illness frightens her:

. . . [I] was ready to make covenant that if he in mercy would be pleased to spare me a little longer, the remaining part of my days should be dedicated to his service, and it was as though it had been spoken to me if I restore thee, "go to Pennsylvania". . . . However, it pleased the Lord to raise me up from this low condition, and I as soon forgot the promises I had made in deep distress, and returning again to my old amusements, endeavored thereby to stifle the witness of God, which was then awakened in me. (p. 4)

But the call is repeated and the conflict continues; finally she feels she has been given an ultimatum:

. . . by the light of Christ . . . I was clearly told, that if I did not comply, I should be forever miserable; wherefore, I took up a resolution, and acquainted my parents with the desire I had of going to America; they seemed shocked to hear it, and were very averse to my going. "I told them it seemed as a duty laid upon me, and that I thought it might be for my good to go, for that by being among strangers, I might with more freedom, serve God, according to their frequent precepts to me." I remember the remark my father made on these arguments, was, "the girl has a mind to turn Quaker." He charged me never to speak any more about it, for he would never consent to my going; his will was as a law to me, and therefore I concluded to obey him, making myself for the present easy, with having so far endeavoured to comply with the heavenly requiring; but it did not last long, Pennsylvania was still in my mind. . . . (pp. 4-5)

So she elopes when the opportunity presents itself. In Pennsylvania she indentures herself to a group of Quakers, for whom she acts as governess. She is impressed by their "solid, weighty and tender frame of spirit" (p. 7) and their evident peace of mind; after a period of penitential mourning, she fulfills her father’s prediction and becomes a Quaker-- "and Oh! the calm, the peace, comfort, and satisfaction wherewith my mind was cloathed, like a child enjoying his father’s favour" (pp. 9-10).

Her happiness continues until she receives a command to become a public preacher. The dialectical pattern of conflict caused by her resistance to what she feels is God’s will followed by an ultimatum and subsequent submission which we saw in her call to Pennsylvania is repeated. Her first response is one of shock; she finds herself "full of sorrow and anguish of soul, and knew not what to do; but often wished myself dead, hoping thereby to be exempt from pain" (p. 11). Finally she senses that she has been called for the last time and says "Lord I will submit" (p. 12). She is still subjected to occasional periods of doubt and despair, but she eventually has an extensive missionary career which includes trips (not very well particularized) to New England, the Barbadoes, and back to the British Isles.

Her attitude towards her position as servant stands in sharp contrast to Elizabeth Ashbridge’s feeling that she had been kidnapped and enslaved:

I am persuaded that if servants were careful to discharge their trust faithfully, to their masters and mistresses, the Lord would provide suitable for their support, through the world, with credit and reputation: I never was more easy and contented in mind, with regard to outward things, in any station of life, than when I was a servant. . . . (p. 15)

Later she even takes pride in her position of high-ranking and trusted servant:

I entered into friend Loyd’s family as an upper servant, such as we call in England, house-keepers, having all the keys, plate linen, &c. delivered unto me; they had a great family; and everything passed through my hands, and as they had reposed such a trust in me; it brought a weighty concern on my mind, that I might conduct aright, and discharge my duty faithfully to my principals and their servants. . . . (p. 21)

. . . I considered I I [sic] had been tried in low life, though never wanted for any necessaries, but was always provided for, having met with kind treatment from all sorts of people, and was blessed with contentment in the station alloted me; now I was to be proved with greater plenty, and favoured with the company of valuable friends, who often frequented our house, and though I was but in the station of a servant, yet was taken great notice of by them, for when they came, I was always allowed to be still in the room with them, this was a great obligation conferred on me, and it did not elevate my mind, but made me more humble and assiduous in my business. . . . (p. 22)

Another point of contrast with Elizabeth Ashbridge lies in her uncommunicativeness regarding her intimate relationships. Her husband is mentioned only in passing; her meeting with her employers is described in a little more detail, but her primary purpose here is to present an example of the divinely inspired ESP of which Quakers often boast:

One first-day, after I had sat some time in Haverford meeting, David Loyd from Chester, with his wife and several other friends came into meeting; as soon as they were seated it was as though it had been spoken to me: "These are the people with whom thou must go and settle": They being strangers to me, and appearing as persons of distinction, I said Lord how can such an one as I get acquaintance with people who appear so much above the common rank: the word was in my soul, be still, I will make way for thee in their hearts, they shall seek thee. . . . I afterwards understood that David Loyd and his wife fixed their eyes upon me, felt a near sympathy with me, such as they had never known towards a stranger before, and said in their hearts this young woman is or will be a preacher, they were both tendered, and it was fixed in their minds, that they were to take me under their care, and nurse me for the Lord’s service, with a promise that his blessing should attend them. . . . (pp. 16-17)

Perhaps it is unfair to compare this work with that of Elizabeth Ashbridge, since it must of necessity come off second best; for Jane Hoskens, with all her servility, gives us in her own right some interesting glimpses into Quaker psychology and contemporary mores. But on the whole it is an undistinguished production.

The Life of Lamenther,¹⁰ by Ann Wall, has been described by Stauffer as "the most unrelieved example of pathos and despair"¹¹ to be produced in this period. It is also unusual in that it is almost entirely devoted to the author’s childhood; the account draws to a close when she is little more than fifteen.

The tone of the work is set in the opening words "To the Reader":

As the Occasion of this short Work is real, and that the Sequel will evidence, I need not therefore adorn it with the Flowers of Rhetoric, which serve to illustrate fabulous Histories. I only mean to shew to the World a Series of unparalleled Misfortunes, adorned only with the naked Beauty of Truth in as clear a light as my weak Capacity will permit.--Know then--The cruel Author of all my Distress in Life--O hard to say! was my Father--and, therefore, Ah Lament Her. . . . (pp. iii-iv)

She begins with her mother, whose story is related to her own life more artistically and coherently than is usual. Her mother is engaged to a young gentleman and has every prospect of happiness, when suddenly a mysterious breach occurs:

. . . behold the Uncertainty of human Happiness! and how little ought we to promise, much less rely, on the favourable Prospect of Joys in view; for were we but to give ourselves Time to reflect a single Moment, we should soon be convinced that some unforeseen Accident or sudden Alteration might entirely put a stop to our gay Schemes of Happiness, and totally destroy our Castle of imaginary Bliss.--And so it proved with this till then happy Pair; for scarcely had Sol twice journeyed from the East ere there was a Period to their Happiness, and a final Separation immediately ensued, nor would they ever more behold each other to the latest Hour of their Lives.

I doubt not but Curiosity must naturally excite the Reader to enquire the Cause of so sudden and surprizing as the Separation may appear, the Cause is yet more so, as a total Ignorance of it is yet predominant in the Breast of every human Being; nor was it ever n the Power of their most intimate Friends to procure that Knowledge. . . . (pp. 3-4)

Her mother angrily storms off to London, "with all the mad Rage of an incensed Woman, with this Determination, ‘To marry the first Man that offered himself, should his Occupation descend as low as a Chimney-Sweeper’" (p. 5). As fate would have it, that man turns out to be her father--a gentleman, and "in exterior Appearance quite genteel and agreeable, nay even handsome" (p. 7), but a feckless and degenerate creature underneath, as her friends try to warn her:

. . . she wrote into the Country and acquainted her Friends of the Engagement she had entered in with one whom she assured them was a Gentleman of Fortune. But they had received Intelligence from a more authentic Quarter of the very Reverse from that she had presented; for though his Person and Education might justly claim the Title of Gentleman, yet the Baseness of his Mind and Principles degenerated even lower than a Brute, and almost made him forego human Shape, to mingle with Devils; and even the most reduce her to want a Morsel of Bread. (pp. 7-8)

Her mother stands by her declared intention, however, and proceeds with the marriage. The predictions of her friends are soon fulfilled; not only does he deprive her of the means of support in order to maintain a mistress, but he also reveals his underlying sadism:

Within six Months after Marriage he not only stripped her of every Necessary of Wearing-Apparel, but also of every Conveniency of Life, excepting a House, which afforded very little besides a Protection from the Weather; and he stripped her for what?--to support a Hussy that was a Servant-Wench in the Family, till he thought fit to make her his Roxana, and then kept in handsome Lodgings, and supported in an elegant Manner. Many curious Ornaments, brought from abroad by her Father, he took to decorate the Rooms, and he and his Dulcinea both took Pride in what ought to have been their Shame, and what he did not take he would dash to Pieces before his Wife’s Face, meerly because he knew she valued them for her Father’s Sake. (pp. 9-10)

His children, too, bear the brunt of his cruelty, and the author is permanently crippled by one of his assaults:

. . . I was scarce two Years old when he went to strike my Mother when she had me in her Arms, with some Part of a Bedstead just taken to Pieces, and missing his Aim, I received a Hurt that can never end but with my Life; and though he saw me languish in extreme Misery many Months, he would never suffer me to have any Relief. (p. 12)

Her mother is finally driven to leave her husband with her three daughters and seek the protection of her sister and brother-in-law:

. . . my Uncle informs me, that a few Months after this Affair, Mr. W____ came Home one Night at near Eleven o’Clock, much out of Humour, as was usual, he immediately whetted a Knife, and laid it on a Table before his Wife, with a strict Charge not to move it before his Return, which was to be at an Hour he then mentioned, and said he then purposed to be her Butcher; that was the very Word, and I have since too often hear him use it.--He then went out, but as my Mother chose rather to forfeit her Charge than her Life, she therefore took her three Children to her Sister. . . . (pp. 12-13)

There they remain for three years in relative peace and security, although one of her sisters dies. At length, however, the mother is stricken; her concern for her daughters during her last illness illuminates some of the injustices and inequities of the social system:

. . . I fear their Innocence will again be exposed to the Mercy of an unmerciful Father and a lude Paramour! Was he not a Gentleman, the compassionate Parish would provide for them in a necessary though plain Manner; but even they will deny them Relief, and refuse them that Shelter which the meanest Beggar can claim. (p. 18)

After the death of her mother, "Lamenther" and her remaining sister are sent to live with their father, his second mistress, and his two illegitimate sons by his first mistress (who, understandably enough, has decamped for parts unknown). Her sister is designated errand girl, and she herself is forced to live in a closet, so that even the neighbors are unaware of her existence, and she is virtually starved:

I say, in this Cell was I fixt, nor dared stir out of it, unless at Night to lie down on the wretched Bedstead, not even to obey a natural Call; and though there was no Fastening to the Door of this dismal Region, yet I was to sit in one Corner motionless, and dared not to venture my Head out of the Closet, when I was almost suffocated with the Closeness of my Confinement. (pp. 33-34)

They are subjected to a constant round of terrorism and physical brutality. Once her sister stays longer on an errand than expected, and her father becomes enraged:

. . . she fell on her Knees, and begged he would not hurt her. . . . All she could say would not appease him, and, with one Blow, he levelled her to the Ground; not contented with that, his remorseless Feet kicked her, till, in a violent Torrent of Blood, she lay breathless before him. This was the first Time he ever stood alarmed at his cruel Actions; for whether through Fear or Conviction I am not able to tell, but he stampt and swore he should be hanged, for he had killed the Girl: They used all Means to recover her, and with much Difficulty she revived, to his no small Satisfaction. (p. 43)

On another occasion, when he wrongly suspects her of lying on the boys’ bed, he kicks the author from room to room and thence down the stairs.

Her mother’s relatives are finally apprised of the girls’ situation and make arrangements for her to live with other relatives. Her father "raged and stormed at the presumptuous Assurance of any Person that dared, in such a Manner, invade his Liberty" (p. 76). She is finally permitted to leave, however, and is taken to the country where she is treated kindly and given an education; she is responsive and learns rapidly:

As soon as I was capable of Reading, I grew passionately fond of Books, and dedicated many Hours, which Others of my Age generally pass in childish Amusements, to that early Exercise and improvement of my Faculties; and whenever I met with a Case any Way similar to my own, I did not fail to lament the innocent Sufferer. (p. 91)

But after six years her uncle and aunt die, and she is once again thrown on the nonexistent mercies of her father and his woman. Her father even goes so far as to attempt to send her to a brothel, which she describes vividly:

I can scarce give a Description of the horrid Scene which presented itself before my astonished Eyes.--In an Instant I was surrounded with a numerous Crowd of Wretches whose Countenances were the Residence of Guilt, Prostitution, and every hellish Principle: they stood some Time gazing on me, and giving their Verdict on my Case. The Oaths and Execrations they intermingled with their Oration, were shocking to hear; an Assembly of Infernals might have equalled, but surely not exceeded this Clang of Creatures, and with such was I doomed to dwell. We had scarcely entered this Sink of Wickedness ere my Guide left me with these Emissaries with a strict Charge to be careful of me--From such Care good Lord deliver me!

She escapes from the brothel and elopes from her father’s house, after which she is shuffled about and forced to depend on the kindness of various friends and relatives, many of whom are afraid of interfering with her father’s prerogatives. She is sent to the workhouse for a period, which is a source of extreme mortification to her although she is well treated. At times she is able to support herself doing needlework. Her autobiography, published by subscription, represents yet another attempt to achieve financial security.

Though Ann Wall’s picture of misery may not be typical, it clearly shows some of the abuses which were possible under the contemporary social system, and the particular vulnerability of women. Throughout her book there is an element of tension between her natural resentment at her injuries and the attitude of philosophical resignation that was traditionally encouraged for all, but especially for women:

Here I am ready almost to cry out, O why is the Earth yet incumbered with such a Monster [her father]! But let me moderate the presumptive Exclamation, and arraign myself for daring to call to an Account that great and wise Being, who orders every Thing by secret Means for some Good or other to Mankind. I say I more than twice condemn myself for that irreverent Thought, and humbly rest in the Opinion of my favourite Author Pope, that, "Whatever is, is right." (pp. 11-12)

As Samuel Johnson noted, Pope perhaps did not know what it was to be poor. But Johnson’s social conscience was in many respects considerably more developed than most of his contemporaries’. The Life of Lamenther demonstrates how little provision there was, even at this period, for the relief of those who found themselves in the hands of people who were not concerned for their welfare.

One of the most peculiar and interesting of the eighteenth century autobiographies is that of Mary Eleanor (Lyon) Bowes, Countess of Strathmore (d. 1800). Not the least curious aspect of this document is the circumstances under which it was written. She was married in 1767 to John Lyon, ninth Earl of Strathmore; both before and after her husband’s death in 1776, she indulged in various indiscretions. Later she was married to a fortune-hunter named Andrew R. Stoney, a bankrupt lieutenant on half-pay. The marriage was predictably stormy: he mistreated her and she instituted divorce proceedings. At one point he hired a gang of ruffians to kidnap her and imprison her in Straithland Castle, from which she was later rescued. The Confessions of the Countess of Strathmore¹² were written in 1778 at his behest, apparently under duress.

The narrative is addressed to her husband, and since it assumes some prior knowledge of her life-story, it is in parts a little confusing. As she becomes more deeply involved in her task, however, the book seems to take on a life of its own, and thoroughness becomes almost an obsession:

Many of the things these papers contain, I have had an opportunity of telling you since I began to write them, which I did not intend to do, till you read them here: other things you have, in the course of the same time, told me you was thoroughly acquainted with: however I would not alter, and I give you my thoughts exactly, as they first presented themselves to me, as you will easily perceive I wrote no rough copy. (p. 91)

We can almost see her sitting at her desk, and her husband interacting with her papers as she produces them:

I have now fully performed my promise, and I rely on your’s to excuse all my faults, except want of veracity, which I am certain you cannot find here, and never shall again, even in the most trifling matter: as I will always rather prefer incurring your more than usual share of dislike to me, than say what is not true.

You saw a bit of these papers last night, when you came into my dressing-room, though I begged you would not look, and was angry at my minuteness, and telling you such trifles: if I had done otherwise, (besides my oath) might you not with justice, and would you not have said, I ordered you to be exact, minute, and scrupulous; so as to declare every thought you had, were not these your own words? And how did you know what I should esteem trifling? Therefore, my dearest, you should excuse this minuteness, and whatever manner I may mention the facts in, so they be but facts! (pp. 93-94)

Her concern with the truth is touching if silly, as she worries over how many kisses she had from this man or that: "Though I do not recollect, I declare upon oath, Mr. Stephens kissing me oftener than I have mentioned . . . ; yet I have such a dread of the possibility of perjuring myself, that I will not take my oath without a proviso" (pp. 98-99). To her veracity she will soundingly swear:

May I never feel happiness in this world, or the world to come; and may my children rest every hour of their lives unparalled misery, if I have, either directly or indirectly, told one or more falsehoods in these narratives; or if I have kept any thing a secret, that even Mr. Bowes could esteem a fault. (p. 99)

The work as a whole has a two-part structure: in the first she enumerates her "crimes" and imprudences; in the second she provides the background for these slips by describing her youth and giving a more coherent autobiographical account. "I have been guilty," she begins, "of five crimes" (p. 5)--and all of them stem directly from failures in her roles of wife and mother:

The first, my unnatural dislike to my eldest son. . . .

My second crime was, my connection with Mr. Gray before Lord Strathmore’s death; in punishment of which very crime, God blinded my judgment, that I could not discern, in any case, what was for my children’s and my own advantage; but in every thing where there were two expedients, I chose the worst.

By medicines, I have reason to think, I miscarried three times, and attempted it the fourth. . . .

Next I repent having profaned Saint Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, by giving Mr. Gray meetings there, before Lord Strathmore’s death.

Another crime was, plighting myself most solemnly to Mr. Gray, at St. Paul’s, to marry none but him; and yet I married you. . . . (pp. 5-7)

She then lists her imprudences, which include a year-long flirtation at the age of fourteen, giving "improper encouragement" to a young man (she burnt one of his letters and swallowed the ashes to prevent discovery), and various visits to conjurers and gypsy fortune tellers. Her naive attitude towards gossip seems almost calculated to besmirch her reputation:

I was always extremely silly, in not minding reports; on the contrary, rather encouraged them; partly, that I might laugh at other people’s absurdities and credulity, and partly, because I left it to time and reason, to shew they were false, and thought a variety of reports would puzzle people; so that they would look upon every one relating to me, as equally false, and even not credit the truth. Whereas, I have since had reason to fear it had quite a contrary effect from effect from what I imagined and intended. (p. 27)

Her account of an abortion gives a fascinating glimpse into the unreliability of contemporary methods of birth control and the inevitable consequences:

I was once with child by him, before I heard of Lord S.’s death. . . . ; but was so frightened and unhappy at it, that I prevailed on him to bring me a quack medicine he had heard of for miscarriage, but never tried it: it was of copperas substance, by the taste and look; he gave it to me very reluctantly, as he said he did not know but it might be poison; however, I would have it.

All the time of my connection with Mr. Gray, precautions were taken; but an instant’s neglect always destroyed them all: indeed, sometimes, even when I thought an accident scarce possible. (pp. 22-23)

She then turns to her upbringing, for it is to a faulty education, "a want of a proper sense of religion" (p. 48), that she attributes her moral turpitude. Her father, a reformed rake, "felt the want of education and study, for he was . . . determined his heir should not feel the same inconveniences" (p. 49). Except for Latin, her education was a thorough one; "I read the Bible, but at the same time equal or greater pains were taken to instruct me in the Mythology of every Heathen nation that ever existed" (p. 50); her mind, she tells us, was "puzzled with such a variety of religions" (p. 50). Her father also concentrated, it would seem, on the pagan virtues:

My father’s whole care and attention was bestowed on the improvement of my knowledge . . . ; and in acquiring me a great stock of health. . . . My father was continually talking of, and endeavouring to inculcate into me, sentiments of generosity, gratitude, fortitude, and duty to himself, and an insatiable thirst for all kinds of knowledge. But I never heard him once say, to the best of my recollection, that chastity, patience, and forgiveness of injuries, were virtues. . . . (pp. 51-52)

She is greatly attracted to Lord Strathmore, a handsome man, and a marriage settlement is arranged. During the course of the negotiations she starts to perceive some incompatibilities, but she cannot bring herself to halt the machinery she has set into motion:

My marriage-treaty with Lord S. for one delay or other, trailed on about a year and a half; during which, I found our tempers, dispositions, and turns different--wished to retract (and would, if I durst have consulted with my mother) but my pride, and some times my weakness, would not let me. . . . (pp. 65-66)

Thus the stage is set for her indiscretions. Some of these are serious enough; many are rather trivial, however, and the reader sometimes feels a mountain is being made out of a molehill:

Once . . . as I was admiring some very scarce and valuable plants at Hammersmith, Mr. Lee told me, if I would allow him the honour to salute a countess, he would give me the most curious; which I did, and had the plant. I recollect once, that Mrs. Stephens sitting on one of her husband’s knees, I sat on the other. (p. 90)

Towards the end of the first part of her narrative, the Countess of Strathmore beseeches her husband to destroy her Confessions:

If you think my sincerity and unreserved confession of my faults may entitle me to ask a favour, let me beg your promise to burn these papers, at least, that you will destroy them when I die, that I may not stand condemned and disgraced, under my own hand, to posterity. (p. 47)

Though it is impossible not to sympathize with this desire, especially in view of the fact that the book was published before her death, we must be thankful that it has been preserved. The author is in every way a lightweight, with little sense of dignity and small talent for moral discrimination. But she is an interesting lightweight and in an odd way even an attractive one; there is a certain strength in her refusal to wallow in the self-pity that characterizes much of the sentimental autobiography by women of this era. And her Confessions clearly reveal the equation between chastity and morality which drained off the energies of so many women of the period.

The Apology¹³ of George Anne Bellamy (1733-88) takes its place among the fairly substantial group of theatrical memoirs produced in the eighteenth century. Though unduly long--it runs to some nine hundred pages in five volumes--it is no run-of-the-mill production, but one of the most powerful autobiographical memoirs of the period. The source of its strength, perhaps, lies in its author’s peculiar combination of sensibility and tough-mindedness. Some of her apostrophes to benevolence and friendship are excessively purple, but she is a masterly anecdotist who has known many interesting and influential people and who is not afraid to relate a lively story even if she herself is its butt.

The autobiography is written as a series of letters to the Hon. Miss _____, which she compares to chapters in a work of fiction. The narrative opens with an account of her mother, the impulsive and headstrong daughter of a Quaker family. She forms an early connection with Lord Tyrawley, bears him a son, and then, in anger at his unfaithfulness, marries a Mr. Bellamy when she is seven months pregnant with George Anne by Lord Tyrawley. Mrs. Bellamy goes on the stage, and George Anne is raised by an Irish nurse who gains her charge’s lasting respect and affection. When the nurse brings the child backstage to present her to her mother, that woman exclaims:

‘My God! what have you brought me here? this goggle-eyed, splatter-faced, gabbart-mouthed wretch, is not my child! Take her away!’ (I, p. 28)

The child left "as much disgusted with my mother as she could be with me" (I, p. 28). Her relationship with her mother later improves, but it continues to have tempestuous moments.

Her father, Lord Tyrawley, eventually takes an interest in her, and she is exposed to a number of prominent people. One of the more amusing anecdotes she tells on herself concerns her interest in and eventual meeting with Pope:

Lord Tyrawley, having prohibited my reading Cassandra, the only romance in his library, and on which a girl of my age and lively disposition would naturally have first laid her hands, preferring poetry to history, I endeavoured to learn Pope’s Homer by rote. In this I made such proficiency, that in a short time I could repeat the first three books. When I thought myself sufficiently perfect, I languished to be introduced to the incomparable author of them; not doubting but he would be as much charmed with my manner of repeating "The wrath of Peleus’ son," as I myself was. (I, p. 36)

Lord Tyrawley finally consents to take her:

As I rode along, the suggestions of vanity overpowered every apprehension; and I was not a little elated when I reflected on the conspicuous figure I was about to make. The carriage stopped at the door. We were introduced to this little great man. But before I had time to collect myself, or examine him, Mr. Pope rang the bell for his housekeeper, and directed her to take Miss, and shew her the gardens, and give her as much fruit as she chose to eat. (pp. 36-37)

After some reflection, she pitches upon a suitable plan of revenge: "I determined never to read the cynic’s translation of the Iliad again, but wholly to attach myself to Dryden’s Virgil" (p. 37).

Given her theatrical background, it is not surprising that she tries her luck on the stage, where her beauty, vivacity, and talent captivate the attention of the aging Garrick. Her career is interrupted when she is kidnapped by an admirer who lures her to his coach by claiming a friend wishes to speak with her there:

. . . without staying to put on my hat or gloves, I ran to the coach, when, to my unspeakable surprise, I found myself suddenly hoisted into it by his Lordship, and that the coachman drove off as fast as the horses could gallop. (I, p. 70)

Her mother blames her for the elopement, and she is reviled and forced to spend a long period with relatives in the country before she and her mother are finally reconciled. But eventually she resumes her stage career, towards which she takes an unusually professional attitude:

Though apparently digressive from my history, yet it may perhaps tend to further the purpose of it, which is to mingle instruction with amusement.--It is by industry and application alone a person can arrive at eminence in any profession. Though natural genius is the most essential quality towards the attainment of every art or science, yet genius unassisted by cultivation can never reach perfection. Intense study and close application are absolutely needful (save in a few instances) to form the truly great. . . . (I, p. 118)

Her dedication pays off in considerable success, and she is for a number of years a much sought-after actress. She eventually contracts long-lasting liaisons with two men, both under the false promise of eventual marriage, and has a son by each. With Jack Calcraft, the more despicable of the two, she describes herself "joined, not matched" (II, p. 113), and comments thus on his cooling passion:

My gentleman, who by this time imagined that I had relaxed from my insensibility, and contracted some regard for him, no sooner thought he perceived this, than from the natural fickleness of his sex, he became indifferent himself. . . . Is it not strange that there should be this unaccountable propensity in man? What they strive to obtain by vows, by bribes, or the most abject submission; and purchase by whole years of assiduity; is no sooner secured, than it loses its value. (III, pp. 23-24)

She places great stock in sensibility and benevolence, and repeatedly asserts that "my errors have proceeded rather from imprudence than a bad disposition" (V, p. 129). The following paeon to sensibility, with its vehemence, intrusive narrator, and heavy Sternean influence, is a good example of these proclivities:

I am almost tempted, at times, to envy those who are born with an insensible heart.--Happy people! (I am sometimes on the point of crying out) happy people! who pass through life in a state of enviable tranquillity. --If ye do not taste, in an exquisite manner, of the pleasures this sublunary state affords; neither do the pains, with which it abounds, pungently affect you. And as the former are uncertain and transitory, and the latter sure and lasting, ye are gainers by the allotment.--So wise a man as Zeno is said to be, could never have taught the doctrine of Stoicism, nor his followers, the most sensible of the Greeks, have embraced it, had there not been some rational foundation for it, and the insensibility it enjoins desirable.--Had thy days, O Sterne, been spared to the united wishes of the lovers of genius, and thou hadst attained a good old age, it is a doubt, whether, upon a review of thy life, thou wouldst not have exchanged, had it been in thy power, thy susceptibility, (and, surely, no mortal was ever endowed with a greater portion) for this unfeeling Stoicism.--Impious thought! it admits not of a doubt.--Thou wouldst rather have exclaimed with me, "Give me my susceptibility, though it be attended with more than proportionate unhappiness!"--The pleasures flowing from love and from philanthropy, neither of which can ever find residence in a Stoic’s bosom, fully compensate for the augmented pains!

As I write from the heart, my pen, notwithstanding my assurances that I would check its sallies, has again, Pegasus like, run away with me.--And so I fear it will do to the end of the chapter. (III, pp. 147-48)

Her kindness is not merely theoretical; her tribute to her nurse after the nurse’s death is one of the few expressions of genuine tenderness towards a servant that we meet with during the period:

At this time I lost my faithful O’Bryen, whose memory will be ever dear to me. In her I lost not only a good servant, but a real friend. For though at times she would give into my innocent whims, yet whenever she thought me wrong, she took the liberty to represent the impropriety of my conduct to me with such mildness and good sense, that her reproof always carried conviction with it, and generally had the desired effect. So that O’Bryen usually succeeded, when my mother’s violence of temper failed, and, I am concerned to add, made me more obstinate. (II, p. 113)

Her description of her suicide attempt illustrates not only her benevolent impulses but also her highly developed sense of the dramatic. In despair over financial distress, she sits by the river and waits for the tide to engulf her:

I was suddenly roused from my awful reverie, by the voice of a woman at some little distance, addressing her child; as appeared from what followed, for they were neither of them visible. In a soft plaintive tone she said, "How, my dear, can you cry to me for bread, when you know I have not even a morsel to carry your dying father?" She then exclaimed, in all the bitterness of woe, "My God! my God! what wretchedness can compare to mine! But thy almighty will be done."

The concluding words of the woman’s pathetic exclamation communicated instantaneously, like an electric spark, to my desponding heart. I felt the full force of the divine admonition; and struck with horror at the crime I had intentionally committed, I burst into tears; repeating in a sincere ejaculation, the pious sentence she had uttered, "thy almighty will be done!"

As I put my hand into my pocket, to take out my handkerchief in order to dry my tears, I felt some halfpence there which I did not know I was possessed of. And now my native humanity, which had been depressed, as well as every other good propensity, by its pleasing influence, I hastily ran up the steps, and having discovered my hitherto invisible monitress, gave them to her. I received in return a thousand blessings; to which I rather thought she had a right from me, for having been the means of obstructing my dire intents. (V, pp. 61-62)

But her real strength lies less in her overblown declarations of susceptibility than in her cool psychological penetration and acute observation of social forms. She is expert at drawing thumbnail sketches which capture the essence of a person’s demeanor; describing the "genteel education" of an acquaintance, for example, she tells us:

. . . she was well versed in the fashions, and in the amusements, of the fashionable world, she spoke bad French, and could invent with great facility, additions to the lie of the day. She had a good address, and abounded in what is usually denominated small talk. She understood the art of flattery so well as to be able to charm her female customers, and of coquetry, sufficient to captivate the men. (I, p. 30)

She is quite subtle in her analysis of the workings of the mind:

There is, I believe, no impression that affects so strongly a young mind as the supposition of being dear to another. Though originating merely from self-love, it incites a reciprocation. They very idea that you are pleasing, stimulates you to render yourself really so, even though there be not that similarity of manners and disposition on which an union of souls is usually founded. (I, p. 33)

She also has an intelligent grasp on the social pressures which affect behavior:

To what continual solicitations are females in the theatrical line, whose persons or abilities render them conspicuous, exposed! They go through an ordeal almost equally hazardous to that used of old as a test of chastity. The maturest judgment and firmest resolution are required to steer them aright. And is this to be expected from frail fair ones, hoodwinked by youth, inexperience, vanity, and all the softer passions? Instead of wondering that so many of those who tread the stage yield to the temptations by which they are surrounded, it is rather a matter of amazement that all do not. Continually beseiged by persons of the highest rank, who are practised in the arts of seduction, and impowered by their affluence to carry the most expensive and alluring of these into execution, it is next to impossible that the fortress should be impregnable,--Fortunate is it for many who pride themselves in their untried virtue, that their lot is cast in a less hazardous state. (II, pp. 14-15)

Her skill at self-dramatization, her self-deprecating irony, her ability to convince us that she and her acquaintances are real flesh-and-blood people, and her recognition of the social forces that may control the behavior of people (including herself)--all these qualities make George Anne Bellamy’s Apology a significant chapter in the history of eighteenth century autobiography.

In some ways the skeleton of the story of Elizabeth Sarah Villa-Real Gooch resembles that of Con Phillips. Both are cast aside by their husbands and go on to formidable careers as mistress to a long succession of wealthy men. But Mrs. Gooch is Con Phillips with a difference; she is Con Phillips bathed in the soft light of sensibility. There is probably no writer who better exemplifies the influence of sensibilité upon autobiography, and upon an author’s perception of herself, than Mrs. Gooch.

The general tone of The Life of Mrs. Gooch¹⁴ is set in the opening pages:

This work is the offspring of solitude and reflection. It has been necessary, in order to complete it, that every recollection should be awakened--every painful idea recalled--and it is to be observed, that some allowances are to be made in a publication of this kind, written more from the heart than from the head.

I am well aware that the language of the heart frequently subjects us to ridicule where we intend it to produce far other emotions; for, among the many readers into whose hands ever publication finds its way, how numerous is the class, that, destitute of sentiment themselves, cannot comprehend its reasoning, much less its merits! (I, pp. 6-8)

The idea that the "want of one real friend" (I, p. 15) has caused all her troubles runs through the narrative like a litany. She seems consciously and decisively to select for misery; the comfortable periods of her life are mentioned only in passing and almost grudgingly. Her sensibility seems to deprive her of every facility for coping with the real world. She is continually bestowing her trust in people who deceive her, steal her belongings, and so forth. At one point she signs a paper "the contents of which I never looked at" (II, p. 92). Yet somehow she seems to thrive, living as mistress to various titled figures and extricating herself from scrape after self-created scrape, only to plunge headlong into others.

The deciding event of her early life is her marriage to Mr. Gooch. Like the Countess of Strathmore, she contracts an engagement hastily and then has second thoughts before the wedding day:

Before this fatal day I had sincerely repented my engagements. Some things that Mr. Mellish had said to me, some remarks I had myself made, and a dislike that I had, in consequence of both these, taken to Mr. Gooch’s family, determined me of sezing [sic] the first favourable opportunity, when alone with him, of disclosing my sentiments. . . . I told him that my mind had changed, and it was my wish to break off the connection. His answer to me was, that if I did, it should be the ruin of my character, and the loss of half my fortune, for which he would sue me. (I, pp. 55-56)

At first her married life was, she concedes, "on the whole . . . not uncomfortable":

. . . the only complaint I had to acknowledge against Mr. Gooch was his continually shutting himself up in the study to receive letters, and write to his family, without imparting the contents on either side to me. This was foreign to my ideas of domestic confidence, without which there cannot, I think, exist any domestic felicity. (I, pp. 92-93)

She is not happy, however; in a bout of puerperal fever after the birth of her second son, she tells us "I wished earnestly for death, and repeatedly told my nurse so. She . . . asked me what could possibly make me desirous of quitting a life which, to her, appeared to possess for me every charm?--I knew not why it was so, yet I did wish it" (I, p. 99). Eventually she receives an apparently compromising note from her music teacher and, though insisting upon her innocence, endeavors unsuccessfully to conceal it from her husband. Gooch’s family determines to make public the story and separate the couple. He retains custody of the children but refuses to grant the divorce she eventually requests, thus cutting her off from the possibility of remarriage. Her uncle advises her to wait out the storm in banishment in France and she blames him rather than herself for the seduction that follows:

Yet how could my uncle avoid foreseeing that, during that interval of time, it was almost impossible I could be able to avoid falling into some of the snares which surrounded me, and particularly as he had seen at my lodgings this Mr. Semple, who was surely well skilled in the arts of seduction?--On the day of his leaving Lille he wrote me a few lines to caution me against this only acquaintance I had made.--He must have perceived that he was likely to gain an ascendancy over me. (I, pp. 164-65)

After that she is kept by a number of wealthy men and travels through Europe and the British Isles at their sides, shuttling from England to France, intrigue to intrigue. Later, as she ages, she can no longer attract a succession of lovers and lives in constant flight from her creditors; it is in this situation that her account closes.

Because she affects to write with her heart rather than her head, her narrative often gives the impression of running away with itself; passages such as the following recur throughout her account:

Why cannot I write this page with composure?--Why, at the recollection of these past times, cannot I partake of that easy indifference, that stoic apathy, which cheers the path of other mortals throughout life?--Why, at this long, this distant period, do my eyes swim in tears, and blot what I am writing?--but I must not, I dare not revert to my own feelings--would that they were buried in a long, long oblivion! (I, p. 75)

Clearly the business of stirring up her own emotions is part of the process, and pleasure, of writing for her. She has an extravagant love of scenic beauty; of Studley Park she says:

This charming spot has surely received a peculiar mark of favour from Heaven; all that art could most ingeniously contrive to assist nature, is there lavished with a liberal hand. The eye is fascinated by variegated walks and temples, and the soul finds food for contemplation in the majestic and vulnerable ruins of Fontane’s Abbey. (I, p. 29)

Mr. Aislabie (the gardener told me) has left five hundred pounds a year to keep it in repair; but how much it is to be lamented that such a place is not the property (not of royalty, for Princes are too lofty to enjoy such scenes! but) of some noble-minded, generous lord, whose doors would not be shut against the poor, and whose true English hospitality, unlike the pampered luxuries of France, would teach him to be happy, and to make others so. Such an owner would I wish for Studley! (I, pp. 31-32)

Despite her pride in her aristocratic lovers, she waxes enthusiastic over what she perceives as a Utopian democracy in a little French town:

In this pleasant country there is no master of ceremonies required to regulate the laws of Society; every person of a decent appearance is well received there; and if the frequenters of Evian have any ill-nature in their composition, or a taste for detraction, they must leave those qualities behind them. There is no distinction paid to rank or precedency; every one is on the same footing, and no impertinent questions are asked concerning who or what they are. (II, pp. 120-21)

Her idea of freedom is also a romantic one; she is convinced that her failure to follow her inclinations and marry an ardent but impoverished suitor in defiance of family opposition was an act which committed her to a lifetime of bondage:

Had I then known my independence--nay, had I even formed an idea of that liberty every British subject is born with the privilege to enjoy, I would have shaken off the fetters in which I was ignorantly bound; I would have spurned at the violence offered to my inclinations, and I would have declared that Dr. Crawford should be my husband--the consequence of his birth and fortune I must have taken on myself; but I knew not that I was the mistress of my choice. Would to God I had; for I am now firmly of opinion, that, had I married him, I should have been spared the weight of woe ever since laid upon me. . . . This idea will never forsake me: it is twisted round every fibre of my heart, and will only be renounced with its last sigh. (I, pp. 20-21)

Despite the tearful, self-pitying excesses and self-conscious emotional posing which render this narrative occasionally rather cloying, Mrs. Gooch is capable of being entertaining and amusing. Her description of one of her early lovers is comical, though it suggests a sort of heartlessness where any but her own life and feelings are concerned:

He was a handsome man; his uniform was white, with pink cuffs and lappels, and he wore an enormous muff, that looked as if it might occasionally serve him for a bed. I admired him, were it only for the novelty of his appearance--he looked like a pretty trinket for a watch. (I, p. 179)

Droll, too, is the controlled bathos of the following passage, in which she is conducted to a luxurious French bedchamber:

. . . I prepared to get under the high down beds which were to insure me a repose, far preferable, as I then conceived to the peaceful bed and home-spun sheets in which the labourer stretches his weary limbs, and reaps the sweet reward of cheerful industry--I was intoxicated with the rich Tokay, and all the luxuries which surrounded me. . . . But, alas! a few minutes only had encircled me in darkness, and sleep was just beginning to favour me, when all the tenants of the bed came forth to hail my arrival!--a thousand, I may indeed say a million, of bugs covered me. (II, pp. 84-85)

Withal, the reader senses a deep-seated ambivalence towards herself and her life--she is both attracted and repelled by the pattern of lurching from crisis to crisis which characterizes her life. One evening she passes a quiet hour in solitude, which inspires the following exclamation:

The evening was charmingly serene, and while the gentlemen were strolling about the woods, I passed an hour there in sweet and melancholy contemplation; no sound broke in upon it but the murmurs of the river beneath, and the sweet warbling of many birds.--"Ah," said I to myself, "What a luxury would it be to a mind like mine to live secluded from the world in an habitation near this, where I could, free and unmolested, invoke the aid of the muses, and enjoy my loved society of books!"--But it is my wretched fate still to be buffeted about by the rude billows of the world, and I am probably, even at this time, entering on another strong sea, from which no port, but that of death will welcome me! (III, pp. 110-11)

The sentiment is highly conventional, yet the note of anticipation in the last sentence--at once fearful and eager--rings true. It is perhaps too simple to say that she enjoys being unhappy, but her autobiography stands as a monument to the emotional blurriness that is implicit in sensibility carried to its extreme.

Hester Ann Roe Rogers (1756-95) was a convert to Methodism, a sect which produced a number a number of autobiographies in the latter half of the eighteenth century. An Account of the Experience of Mrs. H. A. Rogers. Written by Herself¹⁵ was written around 1792 and runs to some fifty-four closely printed pages. It is a severe work indeed, unleavened by any lightness or touches of self-irony.

Her youth was fittingly strict and sober:

I was born at Macclesfield . . . in which place my father was Minister for many years; being a clergyman of the Church of England. He was a man of strict morals, and, as far as he was enlightened, of real piety. I was trained up in the observance of all outward duties, and in the fear of sins, which, in these modern times are all too often deemed accomplishments. I was not suffered to name God but with the deepest reverence; and once for telling a lye, I was corrected in such a manner as I never forgot. We had constant family prayer; the sabbath was kept strictly sacred and as far as outward morality, my parents lived irreproachably, and in all social duties were regular and harmonious. (p. 3)

Even a missed prayer is an occasion for visions of hell:

I never remember going to bed without having said my prayers, except one: I was then diverted by a girl, who told me many childish stories, and so took up my attention, that I forgot to pray till I was in bed: and then being alone, I recollected what I had done, and conscience greatly accused me; so that I began to tremble lest satan should be permitted of God to fetch me away body and soul, which I felt I deserved. I soon after thought I saw him coming to the side of my bed; when I shrieked out in such a manner, as brought my parents up stairs to see what was the matter. This made a lasting impression. . . . I was at this time about six years old. (p. 4)

Her father sharply discouraged any hint of frivolity; he "warned me against reading Novels and Romances; would not suffer me to learn to dance, nor go on visits to play with those of my own age. He said it was the ruin of youth to suppose they were only to spend their time in diversions" (p. 4).

The death of her father is a bitter blow to her, but after she is deprived of his watchful eye she begins to deviate from his standards:

My grief for some time would not suffer me to take recreations of any kind; but I would sit and read with my mother, or weep with her. But after a season, I was invited to the houses of relations and friends; and as I soon became a laughing-stock among them for my seriousness, and dislike to their manners and their plays, I began to be ashamed of being so particular. My mother was also now prevailed on to let me learn to dance, in order to raise my spirits, and improve my carriage, &c. This was a fatal stab to my seriousness, and divine impressions: It paved the way to lightness, trifling, love of pleasure, and various evils. As I soon made a proficiency, I delighted much in this ensnaring folly. My pride was fed by being admired, and began to make itself manifest with all its fruits. I now aimed to excel my companions, not in piety, but in fashionable dress! and could not rest long together without being engaged in this (what the world calls) innocent amusement. I also obtained all the Novels and Romances I possibly could. . . . After this, I attended Plays also. . . . Thus was my precious time mispent, and my foolish heart wandering far from happiness and God; yea, urging on to endless ruin! (pp. 5-6)

After a bout of illness, however, thoughts of religion are reawakened, and cause her sporadic periods of distress. When her uncle, a Methodist, comes to Macclesfield, she is initially hostile but becomes more and more drawn to Methodism; still, she wavers considerably:

But I still had one great hindrance . . . a young person, for whom I had a sincere affection. . . . I was sensible, if I renounced my pleasures, and because God and my own conscience now required, I must, in the first place, give him up, and that fully; or he would be the means of drawing me back; for he was yet unawakened, tho’ outwardly moral. (p. 14)

Finally, she is deeply moved by a sermon and resolves to renounce all worldly pursuits:

I slept not that night; but arose early next morning, and without telling my mother, took all my finery; high dressed caps, &c. &c. and ripped them all up; so that I could wear them no more. Then cut my hair short, that it might not be in my own power to have it dressed; and in the most solemn manner, vowed never to DANCE again! (p. 16)

Her mother, understandably, objects strenuously, first pleading with her and then persecuting her for her new commitment. She threatens to leave home and become a servant, but states she would rather remain in her mother’s house as a servant. Her mother, after consulting friends, agrees, thinking she will soon tire of the difficult work and give it up; "But they knew not the power and goodness of that God, who strengthened me in all my tribulation" (p. 19).

It is shortly after this that she spends an entire night "wrestling with the Lord," recounted in a dramatic passage which is in effect a conversation between the Lord, Satan, and herself as the forces of good and evil struggle for possession of her soul:

"Lord, dost thou care for me! and is this faith, to cast all my care, even all my SINS . . . upon thee? May I? Dost thou bid me? A poor hell-deserving sinner . . . can such love dwell in thee? Is it not too easy a way? May I, even I be saved, if only I cast my soul on Jesus. My burden of sin; my load of guilt; my every crime? What! saved from all this guilt; saved into the favour of God! the holy God! and become his child; and that now; --this moment!--O it is too great; it cannot, surely it cannot be!" (O what a struggle had satan and unbelief with my helpless, sinful soul!) But the Lord applied, "Fear not, only believe." Satan suggested, "Take care; suppose Jesus Christ should fail thee; suppose he is not God! What, if he was an imposter, as the Jews believe!" Oh, the agony my soul felt at that moment. But I cried, "If this be so, I am undone without remedy! . . . " (p. 21)

This remarkable passage shows the vivid contrast which existed between the outer restrictiveness and the inner ecstasy which often accompanied such a religious commitment. She ends the night exhausted, but with a feeling of bliss and a firm conviction of salvation.

After a long passage inserted from her journal, she resumes her narrative with an account of her marriage:

I come now briefly to observe, that after a wonderful Chain of divine leadings, and remarkable providences (too tedious to dwell upon here) on August 19, 1784, I was married to Mr. Rogers. In whom the Lord gave me a help-mate for glory; just such a partner, as my weakness needed to strengthen me. He hath made us one heart, and one soul: For now, for above eight years, he hath crowned our union with his constant smile. (p. 49)

Her husband is an itinerant minister, and the remainder of her life seems to have been spent in producing babies and happily accompanying him on his travels.

Our assertion that she was happy must, however, be qualified somewhat, for at times that happiness was achieved in the face of rather difficult circumstance. One passage in particular gives a clear view of the function religion played in promoting acceptance of adversity:

At the time I now speak of, my own recovery was doubtful. Mr. Rogers (oppressed with grief, thro’ my illness, and by his attention to me night and day,) was very ill. James had a worm fever: The maid confined with sickness; and my little John, six weeks old, lying in convulsions, for three days!--Surely in this scene, the Lord magnified his power in supporting my weakness, and enabling me then to say, "Good is the will of the Lord." (p. 50)

This autobiography is not distinguished by any particular artistry or imaginativeness. Its main interest lies in the awesome seriousness which characterized its author’s entire life, and the way in which fundamentalist religion evidently provide an acceptable emotional release from the "regular and harmonious" life which she led as a child.

Some Account of the Convincement and Religious Experience of Frances Dodshon¹⁶ is a fairly pedestrian example of Quaker autobiography. It is brief (approximately thirty-two pages) and was published in 1793, though it was probably written rather earlier. As a piece of literature, it can best be described as disorganized and repetitive.

Frances Henshaw Paxton Dodshon (1714-93) describes her life as one of "trials and afflictions, almost unparalleled in the present age" (p. 6); evidently she is referring to the periods of grief, anxiety, and temptations she experiences (tinged, perhaps, by the sentimentalism which bathed the latter part of the eighteenth century), since there appears to be little in the external events of her life to justify this extreme statement. Her childhood is not especially unusual; orphaned early in life, she and her sister are placed under the guardianship of their step-uncle:

. . . his concern for our present and future happiness was demonstrated in placing us with such persons as might be confided in, and also be instruments to implant in our tender age, a love of virtue and abhorrence of vice. The education he gave us was liberal, being equal with that of many of much greater affluence. . . . We were instructed in reading, writing, working, and other things--as music and dancing, which by some were thought expedient for our sex and fortune, and which I had naturally a great life in, and which in my more mature age, cost me much sorrow to lay aside; together with other follies of the like tendency, viz. singing, playing at cards, &c. (p. 8)

Though committed to the Church of England, she takes an interest in the Quakers and feels that their practices are closer to those of the "Primitive Believers":

. . . the inward sense given me of them as a people, so conscientious in their converse and commerce among men, kept me from prejudice against them, nor durst I, like some of my acquaintance, (though in other cases I had as quick a satyrical disposition as most) make this people the subject of ridicule, nor speak lightly of the spirit they professed, feeling in the interior of my mind it would be at my own peril, if I should so daringly and imprudently indulge my wit. (p. 12)

When she is twenty, her sister becomes gravely ill, and both are afflicted with terrors of death:

Yet grieving to see her so afflicted, and being naturally of a bolder spirit than she, I was ready to petition the Almighty in the secret of my mind, that she might be relieved if it were consistent with his will, and if one of us must suffer, that it might rather be myself than she, judging myself less timorous; but in the midst of these considerations, I was informed as certainly in my own conscience, as if it had been told me by a person of unquestionable validity and authority, that I must undergo a great work, and know a thorough change before I could be prepared for a happy death. A query arising in me what this could import, and what this change must be, I presently had an answer uttered to my breast with great weight and solemnity to this effect--The change is this: Thou must with others bear the Cross in the closest way, and become a Quaker! (pp. 14-15)

This calling, which she resists, is followed by periods of sorrow and despair so profound that she is tempted to suicide and for a time stops eating altogether. Her friends, too, frown on her conversion:

Oh! most severe and firy trial! I have read thy word is sharp and piercing, yea, sharper than any two-edged sword; and so indeed I find it to bear even to the dividing asunder, of soul and spirit joints and marrow; what will my friends and all the world say of me, if I profess the opinion of a people so much despised? Oh! that when I was born I had given up the ghost, then I had been at peace.

Finally, however, her relations assent to her conversion, and she makes a public commitment to the Quaker faith:

. . . which I had not done above three or four months before my health was restored, to the surprise of all my acquaintance, and my mouth was opened in a powerful manner in a public testimony, to the praise of that Almighty and all-sufficient arm, that had wrought my preservation and deliverance out of the manifest temptations and provocations I had had, through unfaithfulness, to pass through. (p. 35)

Her narrative ends with an account of her marriage, and her idealizing paeon to her husband modulates into a declaration of faith and exaltation of God. The courtship begins during one of her periods of doubt, and she gives the impression that her successful marriage is somehow implicated in the ultimate resolution of her doubts:

. . . in this situation, wherein I looked upon myself as one bereft of all comeliness, I was sought after by several of the chiefest persons in the society, as a companion for life. One WILLIAM PAXTON, imbued with every qualification I could desire, found me in the covenant of light and life, and steadfastly adhered to his fixed resolution to seek me therein, till through much opposition arising from a sense of my duty, and the nature of his intentions, I was made his and he mine; in the unchangeable covenant of life. The Lord was pleased to bless us together for the space of about eight years, in which time I bore him four sons; and after being helped through many visitations of bodily affliction, my dear and valuable husband resigned his precious life into the hands of him who gave it, with a fortitude of patience, becoming a complete Christian--his life adorned his profession, and his death crowned all; being remarkable solemn, and attended with a full evidence of everlasting glory, as well as a promise of an easy or quiet dissolution of his body! Thus lived and died one of the most amiable of his sex; ripe for glory at an age, when few remember their latter end, or take thought for futurity. I cannot repine, though the greatest loser of all his acquaintance; the Lord is sufficient, and as my dear husband said to me before his departure, would make it up to me abundantly, which expressions he repeated twice or thrice; and it has been so, the Lord by his presence has made up all the deficiencies, and is, and I hope ever will be, my all in all, the chiefest of ten thousand, unto my soul that waits to be cloathed in the beautiful garment of clean linen, the righteousness of Christ, that an entrance may be given me into the mansions of uninterrupted rest and neverfading glory, where the redeemed of the Lord, sing everlasting songs of praise and Hallelujah to the Lord God, and the Lamb, who is worthy for ever. (pp. 38-39)

The strange combination of distance and devotion inextricable from her worship of God provides a good example of the integral part that a successful marriage played in the spiritual life of a Quaker.

As Frances Dodshon’s autobiography suggests, the opportunities for originality within the traditional format of Quaker autobiography had bee pretty well exhausted. In the seventeenth century Quaker autobiography made a number of contributions to the art of self-analysis, but by the eighteenth century the formula had become stale and the possibilities for self-analysis were being explored more subtly in other types of narrative.

Catherine Payton Phillips (1726/27-94) was another of those peripatetic Quakers; in her Memoirs of the Life of Catherine Phillips,¹⁷ this indefatigable woman describes her missionary activities in America, all over the British Isles, and Holland. At one point she mentions "having in fifteen weeks attended 117 meetings, and travelled about 1230 miles; nearly the whole on horseback" (p. 198). When she chances to remain ten months in Cornwall, she calls it "the longest period I remember to have been confined within the limits of one country, since my first journey in the service of Truth to Wales, in the year 1749" (p. 235). Her autobiography is lengthy (over three hundred pages) and in many places rather tedious, being frequently an unvarnished recital of the places she has gone, meetings she has attended, and various blessings and lucky escapes. She evidently compiled these memoirs by consulting notes she had made at the time, as she tells us at the beginning of chapter VIII:

From the occurrences related in the close of the foregoing Chapter, until after I entered into a marriage state, I made no minutes of my religious labours, although I was as constantly engaged as heretofore, in attending yearly and quarterly meetings, &c. in diverse parts of the nation. . . . (p. 206)

This method of composition, combined with the lack of any extraordinary imagination, probably accounts for the apparent absence of any real integration into some unified conception of her life and work. The book is a relatively late Quaker work; it was first printed in 1797 and was probably completed not more than a few years before her death, since it breaks off shortly after her husband’s death in 1785.

She was born to a pious Quaker couple; her father was himself a missionary until disabled by paralysis. Her mother, left at home to raise the children, is described by Catherine Phillips as "an example of fortitude, cheerfulness, gravity, industry, economy, self-denial, and resignation to the divine will" (pp. 4-5). In common with many Quakers, she had a guilt-ridden childhood:

. . . as I grew up, I yielded to divers temptations, and was allured from the simplicity of truth; the evil propensities in nature getting the ascendency. But even in my childhood I experienced many conflicts, and my convictions for evil were strong; so that at times my heart was sorrowful, and my pillow watered with my tears, although my countenance and deportment were mostly cheerful. Once, having yielded to temptation, my sense of guilt was such, that I concluded I had sinned against the Holy Ghost; and that, agreeable to Christ’s testimony, I "should never be forgiven." This so affected my tender mind with sorrow and unutterable distress, that it could not be entirely concealed from the family; although I was enabled, even in childhood, to keep my exercises of mind much to myself. I think I must have been about eight or nine years old when it was thus with me. . . . (pp. 6-7)

The anti-intellectual strain of left-wing Protestantism is here evident:

My natural disposition was very volatile, and my apprehension quick; and as my faculties opened, I delighted much in books of a very contrary nature and tendency to those which had engaged my attention in my childhood. I had a near relation, who notwithstanding his having been divinely favoured in his youth, had slighted his soul’s mercies, and pursued lying vanities. He kept house in the town; and through him, myself, and my sisters, had opportunities of obtaining plays and romances, which I read with avidity. I also spent so much time at his house as to be introduced into amusements very inconsistent with the simplicity of truth, and my former religious impressions; so that my state was indeed dangerous, and but for the interposition of Divine Providence, I had been left to pursue courses which must have terminated deplorably. I also read history, was fond of poetry, and had a taste for philosophy; so that I was in the way to embellish my understanding (as is the common phrase), and become accomplished to shine in conversation; which might have tended to feed the vain proud nature, render me pleasing to those who were in it, and make me conspicuous in the world. But the Lord, in his wisdom, designed to bring me to public view in a line directly opposite to worldly wisdom, pleasure, or honour; and when he was pleased more fully to open to my understanding his great and glorious work of renovation of spirit, I saw that I must desist from these amusing publications and studies, and pursue the one necessary business, viz. working out the salvation of my immortal soul. . . . (pp. 7-8)

Later she gives up her attempts at verse-writing for similar reasons:

. . . soon after I appeared in the ministry, I dropped my pen in regard to verses. I do not say it was a sacrifice required; but the continuing of the practice might have proved a snare some way: it might have engaged my attention too much, or tended to make me popular, which I have ever guarded against, perhaps too much so in some points; but I was early afraid of my mind and services being tarnished with vanity. (pp. 18-19)

Once she has "entered the list of publick combatants in the Lamb’s army" (p. 21), she embarks upon the travels which occupy most of the remainder of the narrative. There are few mildly amusing incidents, such as the following encounter with a priest on shipboard:

The parson, observing that in our ministry, we spoke extempore, told me that he could preach extempore, and we should hear him if we pleased the next Sunday. Accordingly when the day came, we were all seated in the great cabin, and he preached without notes. His subject was the transfiguration of Christ, which he found a wonder,--expatiated upon it as a wonder,--and left it a wonder; without entering into the spirituality of the text: indeed I doubt he did not understand it. (pp. 64-65)

On the whole, however, the descriptions are lacking in animation. Some are of interest because they convey the difficulties and dangers of traveling in America, as in the following passage:

Another night, we lay in the woods, with tolerable comfort, though the weather was cold, and the ground damp. About two hours before we stopped, as I was attempting to cross a swamp on some loose pieces of wood, one of them rolled, and threw me backward into it. On of our friends was leading me, and the other, seeing me in danger of falling, stepped behind me into the swamp, and caught me, so that I was wet but on one side, except my feet: and, although I mounted my horse immediately after putting on a dry pair of stockings, rode in my wet clothes, and lay down in them, I was preserved from taking cold. In the night two of our horses strayed away from us, and our guides were obliged to leave us and go in quest of them; so that we were several hours ourselves in this wilderness, surrounded, for aught we knew, by bears, wolves, and panthers. (pp. 80-81)

The personality which emerges from these memoirs is a prim and fussy one, yet a pragmatic one, with the self-righteousness that often accompanies piety. Meeting with an intoxicated man triggers a long diatribe against drinking:

. . . that evening [I] visited a young man, who I thought was near his end; but we had little to say to him, his condition being lamentably stupid. I thought intemperance was the cause of is indisposition, and found afterwards I was not mistaken. O! the deplorable effects of this degrading vice on the body, soul, and temporal substance, of numbers who unhappily indulge in it; whose faculties are debased below those of the brute animals; and so stupefied as not to be roused to the most important work of their soul’s salvation. It lays men open to every temptation, and reduces many from opulent circumstances to extreme poverty. It is destructive of every delicate social enjoyment; it often emaciates the body, deprives the soul of its highest good, the divine Presence, whilst in time; and if continued to the end of it, finally excludes it from Christ’s pure kingdom of everlasting bliss. Alas! that men should indulge in it to their shame. (p. 43)

And so on. At another point she preaches to a woman who has borne her brother-in-law’s child, hoping that her ministrations will promote "the extendings of his grace . . . towards her, although she had been so great an offender" (p. 124). Clues to how she manages to regulate her own life are to be found in the following words of practical advice:

Here I suggest some cautions necessary to be observed by young women in a single state, who travel in the service of the ministry, towards those of the other sex, who are also unmarried.

First, to guard their own minds, lest they admit of any pleasing imagination, and stamp it with the awful name of revelation; and so slide into a familiarity and freedom of conversation and behaviour, which might tend to engage the affections of young men. Secondly, to endeavour to retain a feeling sense of the state of the spirits of those with whom they are intimate, and strictly to observe their conduct and behavior towards them: so will they be the better able to judge of their motives for accompanying them, or of any other act of kindness; and may wisely check any forward though which looks beyond friendship; which may easily be done by some prudent remarks (yet obliquely) in conversation. Thirdly, to beware of hurting any of these tender plants by an austere conduct. When we are singularly made instruments of good, in the hand of Providence, to any soul, there is a natural aptitude to lean a little to the instrument, and to prefer it above others, which for a time may be allowable. The Lord, leading the mind by gradual steps from the love of other objects to the entire love of himself, the only pure, eternal, Excellency, may permit it for a season to lean to an instrument; in which case a prudent reserve is necessary, as well as a tender regard to the growth of the party thus visit. I confess, it is sometimes a nice point, to be ready to be of service to such, and preserve the unity of the spirit, free from a mixture of natural affection; a distinction which I fear has been overlooked by some to their great hurt, but which Truth, if adhered to, will make; and will also direct to steer safely betwixt these dangerous extremes. (pp. 109-10)

Her relationship with her husband, and her curiously oblique descriptions of their twenty-three year courtship, is one of the most interesting aspects of this book. Her initial feelings towards him are ambivalent:

William Phillips was then a widower, and had two young children. His worldly circumstances I was unacquainted with, further than that I then learned the place of his residence, and somewhat of his business, which was, in part, that of an agent to a copper-company. He was considerably older than myself. So that none of these circumstances could of themselves make a connection with him desirable. For as to his employ, which might seem the least exceptionable, it was less pleasing to me than would have been his being his own free man. It was therefore improbably that temporal considerations should bias my mind in his favour; and as to his religious experience, it appeared to be but in its infancy. He had indeed, a frank and open disposition, which, joined to a good understanding, rendered his conversation agreeable. . . . (p. 208)

They correspond and occasionally see each other; "yet such was the restriction we were preserved under, that not sentiment transpired, nor was there any, the least part of his conduct, more than was consistent with a distinguished friendship: and thus we again parted, and continued our religious correspondence" (p. 209). In view of his evidently rather lukewarm pursuit, she decides it is safest to break off the relationship. But later she receives a divine hint that they are to be united after all:

In the year 1766, I attended the Circular meeting, and visited most of the meetings of Friends in Cornwall. Previously to my taking that journey, I had an intimation in my mind, which seemed to point towards a revival of our intimacy. This happened at a time when I was quite free from impressions of natural affection towards W. Phillips: for I was deeply engaged in thoughtfulness respecting another friend, and humbly and earnestly desirous to be informed whether I might safely remove to the place of his residence.

Under this exercise, my mind was turned with uncommon force to Cornwall; and the name of the place where W. Phillips resided was revived with such strength, that it was as if vocally spoken in my soul. (p. 211)

Her urgent compulsion to assure herself that natural feeling and attraction had nothing to do with her desire for union with William Phillips fosters the suspicion that her religion has put her rather out of touch with her own motivations. However that may be, they are finally married in 1772. The marriage is evidently a happy one, and her husband figures more prominently in the remainder of the narrative than is usual in the autobiographies of Quaker women. After his death, which she describes in considerable clinical detail, she launches into an extended tribute to his virtues:

Indeed he was a man who commanded love, esteem, and respect, from his numerous relations, friends, and acquaintance, in their different ranks and stations. . . . Such was his publick character, drawn, as far as it goes, not beyond the life, though by his afflicted affectionate widow.

She also best knew his private virtues, and engaging manners, exemplified in his family connections, friendships, and the general tenor of his conduct. . . . An affectionately tender husband--Ah, me! how shall I delineate this part of his character! Bound to me by the endearing ties of love and friendship, heightened by religious sympathy, his respect as well as affection, was apparent to our friends and acquaintance. (pp. 301-2)

This passage runs on for nearly two more pages. Her sudden shift to the third person supports the illusion that the narrator is an impartial observer, and her return to the first person underscores the intimacy she is describing.

After the death of her husband is a brief description of her brother’s death, and then the narrative breaks off abruptly, giving the impression that it was left unfinished. This autobiography is not a memorable production; there is a little meat and a lot of gristle.

Some Account of the Life and Religious Experience of Mary Alexander¹⁸ is an autobiography which is continued as memoirs compiled from her memoranda by her brother. The latter section continues on into the nineteenth century, but the brief autobiographical portion was written, as the author informs us, in 1798.

Mary Alexander (1760-1809) was a Quaker preacher, and her account of her life falls well within the tradition of Quaker autobiography. She was raised as a Quaker and was zealous in defense of her religion as a child:

At a very early age I believe my mind was, at times, visited with the heart-tendering power of the Lord; long before I knew what it was that contrited my spirit before him. This led me to feel a very great love for such as I esteemed good friends, and enabled me to plead their cause when I heard some speak slightly of them, on account of what were considered singularities. . . . When about 10 years of age, I rebuked a person, who was ridiculing one whom I believed to be a valuable woman; and the person’s answer to me was--"I make no doubt but you will be a preacher when you grow up." I silently received what she said, and felt a secret reward, which enabled me to rejoice that I was permitted to bear my little portion of suffering for espousing the good cause. (p. 13)

She later becomes a little more lax, indulging "in many inclinations and propensities, which required to be slain by the sword of the Lord" (p. 140); eventually and inevitably, however, she is brought to the state of rigid piety which characterized devout Quakers of the period.

This document is neither detailed in its descriptions of events nor highly introspective. Its most interesting aspect, perhaps, is the insight it gives into the process by which the author summons and organizes her material. She begins by disclaiming any belief that her life will edify others; rather, she seems to feel that the act of writing will trigger other memories which will bolster her faith:

It is not with the smallest supposition that any thing I may have to commit to paper can be likely to yield either edification or consolation to those who survive me, that I am induced to attempt to write down some circumstances of my life hitherto: but I am led to it from a belief . . . that to look back and consider the merciful dealings of a gracious Creator, with one of the least in his spiritual family . . . and, as events may be brought afresh to my remembrance, to pen them, may tend to my own future satisfaction and instruction. (p. 12)

The process is exemplified in the following passage (which is also of interest for its derogation, very common in religious works of the latter half of the eighteenth century, of novel-reading):

At this time I was favoured to receive much comfort in reading the Holy Scriptures, which I often took up when alone, to my consolation and encouragement. Then, deeply did I lament that any of my precious time had been spent in perusing publications of an unprofitable tendency; such as plays and romances; and I was made sensible that nothing I had ever been in the practice of, had so much alienated my mind from the love and fear of God, or led me so far from the simplicity of the pure truth, as books of this kind. How often did I wish I could warn the whole world of their pernicious effects, and especially the young people in our society. Penning this remark brings to my remembrance, how, in an instant, I was entirely weaned from ever desiring again to look into a book of this description. It was by a few words expressed by a beloved friend, when I was reading to her one night after we got up stairs, and were retiring to bed. She queried with me, and I believe under divine influence, "Dear Mary, is such a subject likely to profit us upon our pillows?" The question so forcibly struck my mind, that I very willingly laid down the volume, and, to the best of my remembrance, I never more read a page in that, or any of the like kind. (pp. 16-17)

The haphazard, unpremeditated organization is not an accident but is rather deliberately cultivated, illustrating in humble way the emphasis on process, as distinguished from product, which Northrop Frye has perceived as a characteristic concern of the period.¹⁹

The autobiography of Mary Darby Robinson (1758-1800), a promising actress, legendary beauty, and mistress of the Prince of Wales while in her early twenties, was written in 1800 and first published in 1801. If Mrs. Manley’s Rivella is fitting beginning to eighteenth century women’s autobiography, Mrs. Mary Robinson, Written by Herself²⁰ is more than a fitting conclusion, for it brings together many of the various characteristics of autobiography which have been developing over the course of the century.

Although it was left unfinished at the author’s death in 1800 (the account was completed by her daughter), it is one of the most competently-written and consciously artistic of the works examined in the course of this study. The author was a minor novelist (as well as a minor poet), and her autobiography reveals her familiarity with the techniques of contemporary fiction. In Rivella the application of the novelistic techniques is relatively superficial; romance names and a romance aura are substituted on a one-on-one basis for real people and place, and a third-person narrative framework is provided to give the illusion of objectivity and conform with the practices of the roman à clef. Mary Darby Robinson has actually absorbed, in many respects, the myths underlying gothic and sentimental novels, and has incorporated them into her conception of herself. Her opening words conjure up visions of past glories and present ruins:

At the period when the ancient city of Bristol was besieged by Fairfax’s army, the troops being stationed on a rising ground in the vicinity of the suburbs, a great part of the venerable minster was destroyed by the cannonading before Prince Rupert surrendered to the enemy; and the beautiful Gothic structure, which at this moment fills the contemplative mind with melancholy awe, was reduced to but little more than one-half of the original fabric. Adjoining to the consecrated hill, whose antique tower resists the ravages of time, once stood a monastery of monks of the order of St. Augustine. This building formed a part of the spacious boundaries which fell before the attacks of the enemy, and became a part of the ruin, which never was repaired or reraised to its former Gothic splendours. (p. 1)

In a house built on this site and incorporating part of the ruins into its structure, Mary Darby was born:

In this awe-inspiring habitation, which I shall henceforth denominate the Minster House, during a tempestuous night, on the 27th of November, 1758, I first opened my eyes to this world of duplicity and sorrow. I have often heard my mother say that a more stormy hour she never remembered. The wind whistled round the dark pinnacles of the minster tower, and the rain beat in torrents against the casements of her chamber. Through life the tempest has followed my footsteps, and I have in vain looked for a short interval of repose from the perseverance of sorrow. (pp. 2-3)

Her personality is, fittingly, of a "most pensive and melancholy cast" (p. 7). Despite these Gothic touches, there is no reason to suspect that she actually parts company with truth and reality. Indeed, interspersed among these descriptions are a number of homely details; her brother George "is now a respectable merchant at Leghorn, in Tuscany" (p. 7), and her physical description of herself as a child is not at all high-flown: "I was swarthy; my eyes were singularly large in proportion to my face, which was small and round" (p. 7).

Her life was a brief one, and, as she frequently reminds us, not a happy one, despite intermittent periods of relative prosperity. During her early years her father was a successful merchant, and she was indulged and caressed by both her parents. When she was around nine, however, her father was seduced by a grandiose plan to make a fortune:

. . . a change took place as sudden as it was unfortunate, at a moment when every luxury, every happiness, not only brightened the present, but gave promise of future felicity. A scheme was suggested to my father, as wild and romantic as it was perilous to hazard, which was no less than that of establishing a whale fishery on the coast of Labrador, and of civilising the Esquimaux Indians, in order to employ them in the extensive undertaking. During two years this eccentric plan occupied his thoughts by day, his dreams by night: all the smiles of prosperity could not tranquillise the restless spirit, and while he anticipated an acquirement of fame, he little considered the perils that would attend his fortune. (p. 12)

He finally departed for two years, leaving his wife and children behind. At first their accustomed course of life was continued:

Still the comforts, and even the luxuries of life distinguished our habitations. The tenderness of my mother’s affection made her lavish of every elegance; and the darlings of her bosom were dressed, waited on, watched, and indulged with a degree of fondness bordering on folly. My clothes were sent for from London; my fancy was indulged to the extent of its caprices; I was flattered and praised into a belief that I was a being of superior order. To sing, to play a lesson on the harpsichord, to recite an elegy, and to make doggerel verses, made the extent of my occupations, while my person improved, and my mother’s indulgence was almost unexampled. (pp. 14-15)

Eventually, however, communications between the father and his family lapsed, and it was learned that the father had taken a mistress. The mother was prostrate with grief, and the family was plunged into a life of relative hardship and deprivation.

From then on, her father glides into their lives occasionally, issues a few orders, and glides out again. At one point the father lays the following "stern injunction" on her mother: "‘Take care that no dishonour falls upon my daughter. If she is not safe at my return, I will annihilate you!’" (p. 31). Her mother, not a strong-willed woman, is understandably frightened at this threat. Her daughter by now has become very lovely and has already attracted the honorable or less than honorable interest of various men. It is almost decided to try her acting talents, which have attracted the attention of the aging Garrick, upon the stage; but at the last minute her mother wavers and persuades her to enter what looks to be an advantageous marriage settlement. She is around sixteen on her wedding day:

As soon as the day of my wedding was fixed, it was deemed necessary that a total revolution should take place in my external appearance. I had till that period worn the habit of a child, and the dress of woman, so suddenly assumed, sat rather awkwardly upon me. Still, so juvenile was my appearance, that, even two years after my union with Mr. Robinson, I was always accosted with the appellation of "Miss" whenever I entered a shop or was in company with strangers. My manners were no less childish than my appearance; only three months before I became a wife I had dressed a doll, and such was my dislike to the idea of a matrimonial alliance that the only circumstance which induced me to marry was that of being still permitted to reside with my mother, and to live separated, at least for some time, from my husband. (p. 45)

Although she does not love her husband, she is determined to be an exemplary wife. Her husband is troubled by no such scruples. He neglects her and spends his time gaming and philandering, running his family badly into debt. Other men, however, are not so inattentive, and she is subjected to sophisticated and reprehensible attempts at seduction:

Lord Lyttelton, who was perhaps the most accomplished libertine that any age or country has produced, with considerable artifice inquired after Mr. Robinson, professed his earnest desire to cultivate his acquaintance, and, on the following day, sent him a card of invitation. Lyttelton was an adept in the artifices of fashionable intrigue. He plainly perceived that both Mr. Robinson and myself were uninitiated in its mysteries; he knew that to undermine a wife’s honour he must become master of the husband’s confidence, and Mr. Robinson was too much pleased with the society of a man whose wit was only equalled by his profligacy, to shrink from such an association.

Fortunately for me, Lord Lyttleton was uniformly my aversion. His manners were overbearingly insolent, his language licentious, and his person slovenly even to a degree that was disgusting. (pp. 66-67)

By another suitor she is even subjected to a kidnapping attempt, having been lured out on the promise of meeting her husband:

A servant opened a chaise door. There were four horses harnessed to it; and by the light of the lamps on the side of the footpath, I plainly perceived a pistol in the pocket of the door which was open. I drew back. Mr. Fitzgerald placed his arm around my waist, and endeavoured to lift me up the step of the chaise, the servant watching at a little distance. I resisted, and inquired what he meant by such conduct. His hand trembled excessively, while he said, in a low voice, "Robinson can but fight me." I was terrified beyond all description. (pp. 82-83)

Her claim, however, is that she remained faithful to her husband until her liaison with the Prince of Wales--credible enough, actually in view of the lengths to which her devotion carries her, as we shall see.

The birth of her daughter is a happier experience:

At length the expected, though to me most perilous, moment arrived, which awoke a new and tender interest in my bosom, which presented to my fondly beating heart my child,--my Maria. I cannot describe the sensations of my soul at the moment when I pressed the little darling to my bosom, my maternal bosom; when I kissed its hands, its cheeks, its forehead, as it nestled closely to my heart, and seemed to claim that affection which has never failed to warm it. She was the most beautiful of infants! I thought myself the happiest of mothers; her first smile appeared like something celestial,--something ordained to irradiate my dark and dreary prospect of existence. (p. 95)

Through the conventional language of sensibility shines a genuine devotion which is reiterated throughout the narrative. Shortly thereafter, however, her husband is remanded to debtors’ prison. She chooses to accompany him, along with her daughter, living there with him until his release fifteen months later. A touching moment is Maria’s first word, which occurs as her mother is taking an evening stroll around the grounds of the prison:

It was during one of these night walks that my little daughter first blessed my ears with the articulation of words. The circumstance made a forcible and indelible impression on my mind. It was a clear moonlight evening; the infant was in the arms of her nursery-maid; she was dancing her up and down, and was playing with her; her eyes were fixed on the moon, to which she pointed with her small forefinger. On a sudden a cloud passed over it, and the child, with a slow falling of her hand, articulately sighed, "All gone!" This had been a customary expression with her maid, whenever the infant wanted anything which it was deemed prudent to withhold or to hide from her. These little nothings will appear insignificant to the common reader, but to the parent whose heart is ennobled by sensibility they will become matters of important interest. I can only add, that I walked till near midnight, watching every cloud that passed over the moon, and as often, with a rapturous sensation, hearing my little prattler repeat her observation. (pp. 111-12)

This form of interest in the development of her child is something new in autobiography, exemplifying the growing recognition of childhood qua childhood that was occurring at this period in history.²¹

Around this time she begins to think of resuming her professional career in order to ease the family’s financial burdens. She publishes a little book of poems which enjoys indifferent success; then she goes onto the stage, with the approval of her husband, where she is an instant success. During a performance at court she attracts the attention of the Prince of Wales--at eighteen around three years her junior--who falls passionately in "love" with her. She enters into a correspondence with him but is reluctant to become his mistress, knowing the sacrifices she may be required to make:

During many months of confidential correspondence, I always offered his Royal Highness the best advice in my power; I disclaimed every sordid and interested thought; I recommended him to be patient till he should become his own master; to wait till he knew more of my mind and manners, before he engaged in a public attachment to me; and, above all, to do nothing that might incur the displeasure of his Royal Highness’s family. I entreated him to recollect that he was young, and led on my the impetuosity of passion; that should I consent to quit my profession and my husband, I should be thrown entirely on his mercy. I strongly pictured the temptations to which beauty would expose him; the many arts that would be practised to undermine me in his affections; the public abuse which calumny and envy would heap upon me; and the misery I should suffer, if, after I had given him every proof of confidence, he should change in his sentiments toward me. To all this I received repeated assurances of inviolable affection; and I most firmly believe that his Royal Highness meant what he professed--indeed, his soul was too ingenuous, his mind too liberal, and his heart too susceptible, to deceive premeditatedly, or to harbour even for a moment the idea of deliberate deception. (pp. 160-61)

Shortly after this point her narrative breaks off. To bring her story to its close, however, her fears were fully justified. After a couple of years living in royal splendor, her lover tires of her and pensions her off (under pressure) at five hundred pounds per annum. She contracts a rheumatoid disease and becomes progressively crippled. She bravely continues writing, turning out novels, poems, and her autobiography, and dies a disillusioned and unhappy woman in 1800.

The social forces that end to divide women and promote their dependence upon men, and the prejudices and traditions that underpin this model of social behavior, are very clearly illustrated in Mary Robinson’s autobiography. The need to compete with one another for male attention necessarily causes a good deal of friction, and Mary Robinson evinces a considerable antipathy towards other women:

During my long seclusion from society, for I could not associate with those whom destiny had placed in a similar predicament, not one of my female friends even inquired what was become of me. Those who had been protected and received with the most cordial hospitality by me in my more happy hours now neglected all the kind condolence of sympathetic feeling, and shunned both me and my dreary habitation. From that hour I have never felt the affection for my own sex which perhaps some women feel; I have never taught my heart to cherish their friendship, or to depend on their attentions beyond the short perspective of a prosperous day. Indeed, I have almost uniformly found my own sex my most inveterate enemies; I have experienced little kindness from them, though my bosom has often ached with the pang inflicted by their envy, slander, and malevolence. (pp. 116-17)

From men, on the other hand, she is able to tolerate much abuse. We have already observed her generous judgment of the Prince of Wales’ motives. Her husband, too, is exculpated:

. . . I was never beloved by him whom destiny alloted to be the legal ruler of my actions. I do not condemn Mr. Robinson; I but too well know that we cannot command our affections. I only lament that he did not observe some decency in his infidelities; and that while he gratified his own caprice, he forgot how much he exposed his wife to the most degrading mortifications. (p. 133)

Her father’s behavior, objectively speaking, is despicable. Not only does he desert his family; he also undermines any attempt the mother may make to secure her position independently. Mary Robinson lauds her father’s pride, for example, when he forces her mother to relinquish the little school she has established:

The number of my mother’s pupils in a few months amounted to ten or twelve, and just at a period when an honourable independence promised to cheer the days of an unexampled parent, my father unexpectedly returned form America. The pride of his soul was deeply wounded by the step which my mother had taken; he was offended even beyond the bounds of reason: he considered his name as disgraced, his conjugal reputation tarnished, by the public mode which his wife had adopted of revealing to the world her unprotected situation. A prouder heart never palpitated in the breast of man than that of my father. . . . (p. 28)

Her general opinion of her father’s rectitude, which she repeats a number of times, is most clearly sated in the following passage:

This deviation from domestic faith was the only dark shade that marked my father’s character. He possessed a soul brave, liberal, enlightened, and ingenuous. He felt the impropriety of his conduct. Yet, though his mind was strongly organised, though his understanding was capacious, and his sense of honour delicate even to fastidiousness, he was still the dupe of his passions, the victim of an unfortunate attachment. (pp. 20-21)

Perhaps it is not too far-fetched to speculate that her complete acceptance of a double standard of behavior, which holds women responsible for peccadilloes but excuses men for major lapses on the grounds of "impetuosity of passion," constituted the basis for Mary Robinson’s tragedy.

The second half of the eighteenth century, as we have seen, confirms some of the new trends established in the earlier part of the century. Quaker autobiography continues to be written in significant numbers, though by now the form has become so convention-bound that the content seems highly diluted. Some Quaker works of the period, such as that of Margaret Lucas, are charming and well-written; but none are surprising and most are fairly pedestrian. The work of Hester Ann Rogers represents the influence of Methodism on women’s autobiography; but this influence can in no way be compared to that of the Quakers.

Secular works continue to predominate, and almost all were written for publication and under pressure of need. No longer are the secular works clustered within a few years of one another, as they were in the seventeenth century; rather they are scattered throughout the century. Even more tenaciously than in the beginning of the century, the authors of this period draw their material from love and its variations of intrigue and ambivalence or hostility towards men; indeed, with the partial exception of Ann Wall, it is difficult to think of an exception to this generalization. The handling of this theme by women autobiographers has grown increasingly sophisticated--not coincidentally paralleling the publication of Pamela and the subsequent appearance of the great eighteenth century novels. The catalytic function of the novel in the formation of women’s evolving idea of themselves as evinced in their autobiographies can hardly be overestimated. This influence can be traced in the increasing intricacy of self-analysis and in the growing impact of the cult of sensibility. Another development which deserves particular mention is the sudden début of several theatrical figures as autobiographers.

The autobiographies written in the eighteenth century, taken as a group, are radically different from--and much more diversified than--those of the seventeenth century. Religious autobiography has lost a lot of its freshness and originality. And gone are the simple and touching accounts of domestic trial and devotion produced in the privacy of their closets by aristocratic wives. Here instead are Elizabeth Elstob, austerely pursuing her scholarly studies; Sarah Churchill, staunchly defending her conduct of the political affairs of the nation; Charlotte Charke, sitting in her dreary quarters with a broken set of bellows in her lap to serve as a writing desk, negotiating with a publisher for the latest installment of her Narrative; and Mary Robinson, abandoning her acting career to become a mistress of the Prince of Wales. What has happened in the space of just a few years to cause such a striking shift in the nature of the autobiographical writings of women? In chapter VI, I shall attempt to isolate some of the developments underlying these changes.