Romance Readers and Romance Writers

by Sarah Green

Christopher Goulding

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317303695
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria

This edition of Romance Readers and Romance Writers (1810) is the first modern scholarly publication of what is arguably Green's most famous novel. As with many of her other works, Green adopts numerous sophisticated methods to parody her contemporaries.

Romance Readers and Romance Writers.

ROMANCE READERS AND ROMANCE WRITERS:

A Satirical Novel.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

BY THE AUTHOR OF ‘A PRIVATE HISTORY OF THE COURT OF ENGLAND, &C.’

GNATHO.	Quid agitur?
PARMENO.		Statur.
GNATHO.			Video.

Numquid nam hic, quod nolis, vides?

PARMENO.	Te.
GNATHO.		Crede.

TERENCE.¹

M.G. LEWIS, ROSA MATILDA, HORSLEY CURTIES, &c. parlent.

Hélas, mon Dieu, craignez tout d’un auteur en courroux, Qui peut²——

BOILEAU.

VOL. I.

LONDON: PRINTED FOR T. HOOKHAM, JUNIOR, AND E.T. HOOKHAM, 15, OLD BOND STREET. 1810.

Chap. I.
Three Brothers.

THE EFFECTS OF ROMANCE READING.

RALPH.

The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find),
Is not to act or think beyond mankind;
No pow’rs of body or of soul to share,
But what his nature and his state can bear.³

POPE.

CHARLES.

Sincere, plain-hearted, hospitable, kind;
Yet, like the must’ring thunder when provok’d.⁴

THOMSON.

EDWARD.

Slave to no sect, he takes no private road,
But looks through nature, up to nature’s God.⁵

POPE.

“IT is very strange,” said uncle Ralph, with evident impatience and vexation, as he threw down on the table with great force a romance of the last century, “that a writer must use so many words, only to tell us, that a woman got up and sat down again! No, they must inform us in high-flown, poetic language, that she rose from her mossy couch, and then thoughtfully reseated herself, and resumed her pensive posture! and then, if the wind happened to blow her thin clothes about, and made her ribbons flutter and fly, we must be entertained through half a page with her silken scarf floating in the wind and the rude zephyr discomposing her light and nymph-like attire!”⁶

Uncle Charles, who had been studying the last orders of General Wolfe, ⁷ and who had just brushed away a tear from off his veteran cheek, which the last exhortation of that renowned hero to his soldiers had drawn from his eye, shut the orderly-book,⁸ and smiled, ’midst his tears, at the ideas of his brother Ralph; while Edward, busy in reading a newspaper, laid it down and assented to Ralph’s opinion by a half-stifled smile, and the word – humph! uttered so inwardly, that it sounded not much unlike the grunting of a pig!

But, in order to preserve some method, it is necessary to introduce this trio to our readers, and describe the sort of character which each of them (all originals in their kind) was possessed of.

The eldest brother, Mr. Ralph Marsham, was left in possession of a small paternal estate, comfortable, because clear and unincumbered; but income-tax, property-tax, and land-tax,⁹ had rendered him less rich than in the days of his youth: and a most valuable farm being attached to his estate, he resolved to superintend it himself, and indeed to work on it with the same indefatigable toil which his labourers bestowed upon it, in order to ensure to themselves the excellent and plentiful cheer, together with the ample wages which Mr. Marsham allowed them.

Gentlemen-farmers are but sorry tillers of land; and the master’s watchful eyes, and even his assistance united, will not avail much, if he is not a thorough judge of that profession which is universally allowed to be the most happy and independent of any in the world.

But Ralph derived one advantage by his perseverance; he made labour easy and habitual to him, by boldly inuring himself to it; and continual and heavy losses, blights in his corn, diseases in his cattle, and the frauds of his serving-men, soon reduced him to that state which rendered exertion on his own part, and unwearied employment about his farm, an indispensible obligation.

He was endowed with a solidity of understanding, good, honest principles, but was rather a kind of every-day character; and was chiefly guided both in the pursuits of his studies, and all his most important actions, by mere matter of fact.

Charles, the second brother, had been bred to the profession of arms, and was, at the commencement of this history, a lieutenant on half-pay.¹⁰

An early introduction into the world’s grand theatre had given, to a prepossessing person, an ease of manners, and a certain address, which marked the gentleman in every movement, and which the society of the army alone is capable of imparting to the well-born officer: the heart of Charles was warm, and might with truth be said, to be seated in its right place – but his head approached to that temperature which is generally known by the appellation of hot; which heat often led him astray: his temper and his expressions were both hasty, and in the latter he thought no epithet too energetic to evince his indignation against the person who had offended him: but the principles of revenge and resentment only played upon his lip, they never entered his generous and excellent heart!

Like his brother Ralph, he affected to despise all romantic enthusiasm: but this in Charles was affectation only; a tale of woe, either real or fictitious, always surcharged his heart, and caused the tender overflow to glisten in his eye.

Edward, the youngest, had just attained his forty-second year; he was bred to the church, and enjoyed a curacy of fifty pounds per annum! He had been for some years a widower, and was the father of two daughters, the surviving children of five, by an unportioned, amiable, and by him, ever-lamented wife.

As he had a right honourable young rector, who hated the church most cordially, except by those emoluments it brought him, through a considerable living; and who rapaciously seized on every perquisite that his poor curate in the country might have enjoyed, under one more kind and beneficent; Edward, except for the bounty of honest Ralph, would have found great difficulty in bringing up and educating his two daughters on so scanty a pittance as he received for his labours in the ecclesiastical vineyard.

To those who were not acquainted with Edward’s real character, there appeared a moroseness about him, which was repellent in the extreme: his manners were cynical, and his sentences in general short and severe: having in his infancy received a most severe castigation, through the perfidy and duplicity of a schoolfellow, whom the generosity of his heart forbade him to betray, he had taken such an abhorrence to the vice of lying, that he thought no punishment too severe for the offence; and no outward terms that language can bestow, strong enough to express his indignation at so despicable a vice. “I can arm myself,” he would say, “against a murderer, I can bar my doors against a robber; but can I guard against the wretch who wounds me in secret with his tongue, or steals from me my friends, by attacking my reputation?”

How much is a man of this candid principle to be pitied, and what dreadful mortifications attend the votary of truth, who is a most profound politician! Such was Edward Marsham, who was seldom seen without a newspaper in his hand; and oh! what an inundation of falsehoods has a newsmonger daily to encounter!

The elder Mr. Marsham had always remained a bachelor, and had now given up all prospects of matrimony. One reason, he urged, was, that having always been bred a gentleman, he could not think of taking as a partner for life an uneducated woman, who could be nothing but the plain country housewife; who, after the occupations of the day were over, could entertain him with nothing but the settings of his geese, how many eggs had been put under the black hen, when the brindled cow would calve; or that next week would be the great wash, and then he must not invite the friends he had promised himself; “While she sits,” added he, “burning off the end of her cotton, before it goes through her needle, by one solitary candle, to save expence, while she is darning her own or her children’s stockings! – else I must be tied for life to one of these modern ladies with a finished education; and how finished? by the figurante,¹¹ the drillserjeant, and the black cymbal-player*! It is true, my gay wife might perform well on the harp and the tambourine; but then, either as the Grecian or the Egyptian habit might prevail, I should see her, in common with every one else, half naked, or laced up in a pair of long stays, the complete figure of an Egyptian mummy: she could never find her keys or her purse, because she wears no pockets; and as she was shopping¹² perhaps some whole morning without purchasing any thing, her ridicule¹³ has been left on some counter or other, but where she knows not, containing, may be, twenty or thirty pounds’ worth of cash: then if I should be blessed with children, she has them christened by names I can scarce pronounce; and puts a bar to all comfort of her society and conversation, by continually poring over a set of idle novels and romances: While the woman of real sense and amiability, possessed of sweetness and cheerfulness of manners, united to a well-cultivated mind, I am sure will never wed a man like me; and thus, as I have lived, I will die a bachelor.”

Such was the reasoning and determination of Ralph, on his state of celibacy; and on the death of his sister-in-law, he resolved on making his nieces Margaret and Mary his heirs; his property, when divided between them, would not be great, and he bestowed on them a plain and useful education.

When Edward and Charles became widowers, they united their small property to that of their brother Ralph; and they, with the two nieces of Mr. Marsham, composed the family at the spacious farmhouse.

“I am not fond of fictitious histories of any kind,” said Ralph, continuing his observations on romances, as he leaned his elbow on the dirty, much-used, marble-papered cover of the volume he had just thrown down, and which his niece Margaret had been attentively perusing with very different emotions to those of her uncle. “These works deal so much in the marvellous; in events utterly impossible ever to have taken place.” – “I recollect once,” said Charles, “being confined one day at an inn, when I was travelling, by an heavy fall of snow, and expecting, when I asked for a book, I should have that collection given me which is reckoned amongst “The Miseries of Human Life,”¹⁴ my landlady brought me up a modern romance; and there I read of a young lady who had been some years confined in a dungeon, without light, and great part of the time without food! yet when she came out, her delicate form and astonishing beauty captivated all who beheld her, and in particular one of her deliverers, who afterwards married her.” – “And yet, I am sure,” said Ralph, “she must, from famine and confinement, have grown as ugly and as sallow as a witch; and from the damps and chills of her dungeon, as they express themselves, her pretty limbs must have been either useless, or grown confounded clumsy, from being swelled with the rheumatism!”

“Ay! ay!” said Charles, “I am sure her person must have received considerable damage, for I well remember that my friend Colonel George Aylesbury,¹⁵ before he was confined for debt in the apartment of the King’s Bench, was as good-looking a soldier as ever I saw in my life; and now he appears older, by ten years, than he really is, and looks more like a black-diamond merchant¹⁶ than an officer.*”

“I wish, brother Charles,” said Edward, “you would not make use of so much slang in your conversation, but call things by their right names: pray, is not the word coals as easy to pronounce as black diamonds?”

“Certainly,” said Charles, “but you interrupted my remarks on the effect of confinement on the person: you are fond, my reverend brother, of theatrical amusements; well! was not the once beautiful Mrs. W.¹⁷ quite spoiled from every appearance of elegance? could she ever again reassume on the stage the masculine habit, in which she once looked so well? Her face, it is true, was so lovely, that it required the rudest hand of adversity to disfigure it; but her fine form (though she was always inclined to the embonpoint) was totally destroyed; and, had it not been for the generous Turk who extricated her, the confined walls of the King’s Bench would have in time given to her such a rotundity, that she could never have appeared on the theatre again.†”

“Ah! now you have ascended from the slang to the novel style,” said Edward, “with your rude hand of adversity; but I maintain, that the greatest part of novels ought to be burned by the common hangman; though there are, no doubt, some of those works of fiction, which are both moral and entertaining.”

“What,” cried the two elder brothers, at the same time, “do you, Edward, defend any thing fictitious?” – “Assuredly,” replied Edward, “otherwise, I must condemn the excellent fables of Æsop, Les milles et une nuits, and many of the works of the ancients: but here,” continued he, while he clenched his teeth and crumpled up the newspaper in his hand, “here is the vehicle of the most daring and most abominable lies that ever human art and malice can invent.”¹⁸

“Reflect, Edward,” said Charles, “that the editors of these papers pledge themselves to fill this paper daily, for the amusement, as well as the information of their subscribers. A man sees, each day, before him this sheet, which he knows must be filled; and if there is a dearth of home news, and foreign mails are late in their arrival, he must either conjecture or invent, to please the public.”

“No,” said Edward, “let him leave the places blank; let the paper appear pure as it is, till stained by man; nor sully his columns by falsehoods, which only serve to encourage the growth of rebellion, or delude the stanch¹⁹ loyalist into a belief of victories obtained, which the same paper will next day contradict; and thus the stings of disappointed hope inflict a double pang to the mind, that had before exulted in the success of his country’s arms, or those of her allies.”

The fascination of habit is not easily done away; and the arrival of the postboy, with letters and the important newspaper, gave a truce to all other though...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Select Bibliography
• A Note on the Text
• Literary Retrospection
• Romance Readers and Romance Writers
• Notes