‘Pamela is Married’, by Joseph Highmore (1692-1780), the ninth in a series of illustrations of Samuel Richardson’s groundbreaking novel, first published in November 1740. Next to Pamela is her former employer ‘Mr B.’, now to be her husband. At the back of the chapel is Mrs Jewkes clutching a bottle of smelling-salts, and the maidservant Nan peeps round the door. Each had played some part in Mr B.’s harassment of Pamela, but Pamela has brought all of them to repentance. Pamela’s father John Andrews, an ordinary decent fellow, stands beaming with pride in the shadows to her left. The celebrant is the Revd Mr Williams, who has been Pamela’s secret helper throughout.
Part 1 of 2
THUS it was that in age when the chief reward of virtue was held to consist in worldly advantages — in riches, in the command of comforts and luxuries, in a high social position, in fine houses and equipages — that the praises of the high morality of Richardson’s novel by his contemporaries were in some degree misapplied. ‘Pamela’ was recommended from the pulpit. One critic holds that if all other books were to be burnt, this book, next to the Bible, ought to be preserved. Another says, he would bring up his son to be virtuous by giving him ‘Pamela’ as soon as he could read. One eminent man, indeed, writes candidly to the author, that he understands the ladies complain that they cannot read the letters without blushing.* But the moral of the story was not an exalted one. Mrs Barbauld has truly said that “a novel written on the side of virtue was considered as a new experiment.”* It perfectly succeeded; for the virtue was not too refined or disinterested to be above the comprehension of the worldly-minded or the uneducated.
* Pamela is an ‘epistolary novel’ written in the form of correspondence; the idea of writing fiction in this form was not new, but the success of Richardson’s tale made the epistolary novel a Georgian fashion. The idea came when clients asked Richardson, as a printer, to mock up some letter templates. He told them that he would like the content to have some moral purpose, and the first germs of Pamela were sown. Epistolary novels became more rare in the later Georgian era but Mary Shelley’s
* Letitia Barbauld (1743-1825) also tells us that “Even at Ranelagh, those who remember the publication say, that it was usual for ladies to hold up the volumes of Pamela to one another, to shew they had got the book that every one was talking of.” Ranelagh Gardens was the trendiest new gathering-place, opened in 1742 as a competitor to the more established Vauxhall. Novelist Horace Walpole (1717-1797) also found Pamela all-absorbing. “I can send you no news” he wrote, in a now lost letter seen by Anna Seward (1742-1809); “the late singular novel is the universal, and only theme — Pamela is like snow, she covers every thing with her whiteness.” For Walpole’s impressions of Ranelagh, see Ranelagh Gardens.
Précis
‘Pamela’, Samuel Richardson’s first novel, was published in 1740. It went against the grain of Georgian fiction by adopting a high moral tone, leading some admirers to cry it up as second only to the Bible, apparently overlooking several racy scenes. Indeed, that same blend of morality and realism was what made ‘Pamela’ appeal to ordinary people. (56 / 60 words)
Part Two
Samuel Richardson sometime before 1754, by Mason Chamberlin (1727-1787). Georgian fiction was dominated by famous writers such as Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Laurence Sterne and Henry Fielding, but for a time Richardson eclipsed them. He succeeded, much as P. G. Wodehouse’s Evangeline Pembury succeeded, by writing a novel “which you could leave lying about and didn’t have to shove under the cushions of the chesterfield every time you heard your growing boys coming along.” The novel instantly provoked a flurry of satires (including Fielding’s Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews, published the following year), but Richardson became the talk of London and Pamela is today widely regarded as a groundbreaking work of fiction.
A beautiful girl, the daughter of humble parents of true respectability, honest, loving, patient, and pious goes forth from her home to be a servant in a rich family. Her master is drawn as one of the coarsest of libertines; proud, selfish, of no tenderness of nature; a slave to his passionate impulses; and yet, after attempts which could scarcely be called seduction,* she cherishes designs, amidst all her virtuous resistance, to become honourably allied to him, and she completes her purpose.
Nevertheless, there is so much of truth and nature in the conduct of the story that we may have perfect confidence in the anecdote told by Sir John Herschel, of the blacksmith of a village who read ‘Pamela’ to his neighbours collected round his anvil.* When the hero and heroine were brought together to live long and happily, according to the most approved rules, the congregation were so delighted as to raise a great shout, and procuring the church keys, actually set the parish bells ringing.*
* Mr B. (her employer) secreted himself in Pamela’s closet to watch the fifteen-year-old undress; he pounced on her with unwelcome kisses; he drew up a contract for Pamela to be his mistress (since her low birth ruled out marriage); he even crept into her bed disguised as Nan, the housemaid. There were many other scenes that some felt did not tally with Richardson’s assurance in the Author’s Preface that he would teach virtue “without raising a single idea throughout the whole, that shall shock the exactest purity”, but Richardson had also undertaken “to paint Vice in its proper colours, to make it deservedly odious”.
* Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871), son of the pioneering astronomer Sir William Herschel (1738-1822) and Mary Baldwin (1750-1832). His remarks were made, according to Sir Walter Scott’s biographer George Allan, in Herschel’s opening address to the subscribers of the Windsor and Eton Public Library, of which Sir John, a native of Slough, was President. Novelist Cecil Roberts (1892-1976) stated that the blacksmith attended horses on the road from London to Bath at Salt Hill near Slough in Berkshire.
* Apparently the same idea occurred to avid readers far beyond Slough. Hester Thrale’s aunt told her that the townspeople of Preston in Lancashire rang the church bells when the news reached them. “Her Maid came in bursting with Joy,” Thrale recalled in her diary Thraliana, “and said why Madam poor Pamela’s married at last; the News came down to us in this Mornings Paper.”
Précis
Pamela, a lovely working-class girl, is a servant in a great house. Her master subjects her to ceaseless sexual harassment, but Pamela wears him down until at last he reforms, and begs her to marry him. In one English village, the tale so gripped the inhabitants then when they heard of the wedding they rang the church bells. (58 / 60 words)
