SOURCE: Jones, Ann H. “Elizabeth Hamilton (1758-1816).” In Ideas and Innovations: Best Sellers of Jane Austen's Age, pp. 19-48. New York: AMS Press, 1986.

[In the following essay, Jones examines Hamilton's major works, discussing her role in the development of the novel and documenting her contemporary critical reception.]

One day in November 1813 Jane Austen wrote to tell her sister Cassandra that the second edition of her Sense and Sensibility was out:

Mary heard before she left home, that it was very much admired at Cheltenham, & that it was given to Miss Hamilton. It is pleasant to have such a respectable Writer named.¹

And it is not surprising that she was pleased to have Elizabeth Hamilton's attention drawn to her work, for according to Mrs. Elwood “it was considered a distinction to be acquainted with her,” her Monday “at homes” being attended “by all the principal literary characters of Edinburgh.”²

Known in later life as Mrs. Hamilton, though she never married, Elizabeth had been born in Belfast in July 1758, the youngest of three children. Her father, a merchant, had died of typhus fever in 1759 and it would seem that his death caused his family to face financial problems, since in 1764 Elizabeth was put into the care of her father's sister and her husband, a Mr. and Mrs. Marshall who lived in Scotland. They gave her a comfortable and kindly home and a good education. Her only brother, Charles, had joined the East India Company in 1772 and died in 1792. From 1792 to 1804 Elizabeth and her sister Katherine had lived in various places in the south of England, and then settled in Edinburgh. By the time Jane Austen wrote the letter noted above, Mrs. Hamilton had become highly respected as a moral writer.³

She was not only “respectable,” however: she was popular, her Cottagers of Glenburnie of 1808, for example, being in its fifth edition in 1813.⁴ Yet though she regarded imagination as “the first of blessings,”⁵ she was not really a novelist, nor is it likely that she thought of herself as one. Possessed of a not inconsiderable wit, she was rather a moral essayist and educationist who, horrified by current events in France, had turned to fiction in the 1790s because of the apparently compelling need to gain as wide an audience as possible for her views, which were in many respects closely akin to those of the Evangelicals,⁶ though at that time, because of the common and mistaken belief that all evangelicals were fanatical “enthusiasts,” she would have objected very strongly to being associated with them. Even as late as 1808, she referred to Methodists as “professors of evangelical righteousness.”⁷ Nevertheless it must chiefly have been the manner of some Evangelicals to which she objected, for there seems no doubt that even in the 1790s she was in tune with many of their ideas. She kept, for example, a private journal to help her in the exercise of self-examination, which she like the Evangelicals regarded as the basis of moral and religious improvement.⁸ She wrote approvingly of Hannah More,⁹ and her first attempt at fiction,¹⁰Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah (1796), was in effect a commentary on the religion of the fashionable world as discussed by Mrs. More some years earlier.¹¹ Also significant, perhaps, in reflecting the seriousness of her aims, is the fact that though the Rajah's letters are certainly fictitious the collection can only tentatively be called a novel, since there is no plot, merely a device at the beginning for getting the Rajah interested in English religion, customs, and attitudes, followed by his observations on these as he travels in England. The device, in fact, is similar to that used by Goldsmith in his Citizen of the World essays: an observer from an entirely different culture comes to England to write about what he sees. But the observer in Mrs. Hamilton's work, the humane and intellectually curious Rajah Zaarmilla, is the only character who comes to life; the rest are all types or models glimpsed fleetingly as he travels from place to place.

Yet the book was successful enough to have reached a fifth edition by 1813. Quite apart from its obvious kinship in ideas with the concurrently widely-selling works of William Wilberforce and Hannah More, it came at a time when interest in India was high, the impeachment of Warren Hastings having been a cause célèbre between 1788 and 1795. Mrs. Hamilton's brother Charles had recently been home on extended leave from India,¹² so she was not without sound information about the country. And a flavor of India there is—but only a flavor. Anyone turning to the book chiefly in the hope of learning about a foreign country would be sorely disappointed. Though there is a purely factual and fairly lengthy “Preliminary Dissertation on the History, Religion and Manners of the Hindoos,” and the Rajah necessarily makes occasional comparisons throughout between English manners and customs and those of his own country, there is otherwise little about India in the book, which instead touches critically on as many aspects of English life as possible. For example, the Rajah goes to a rout, which, he writes to a friend, is “a species of penance of which the pious Yogees of Hindoostan never conceived an idea” (II, Letter XIII, 113); to the theater, where he is struck by “a species of lunatics called Bucks” (II, Letter XIII, 124); to a prison, the dreadful conditions of which make him believe that there must be “a supplementary code of Christian laws and Christian precepts, which in many respects must essentially differ from the old one” (II, Letter XIII, 158); and to a church service, where he invites a poor woman who is standing in the aisle into his pew, to the fury of his “Christian” companions (II, Letter XIII, 64-66).¹³

Combined with this general satire on society, with its emphasis on the lack of real Christianity, is an attack on political radicalism—especially on the theories of William Godwin, which Mrs. Hamilton gave to a group of “philosophers” whom the Rajah meets at a country house where he stays for a while.¹⁴ Typical of the satire on Godwinism is the appearance of two of the group's leading lights, Mr. Axiom and Mr. Puzzledorf, at the trial of one of their servants, who has felt justified in robbing them because he has heard them deny the existence of crime and declare the injustice of property. Though they assure him that in theory they were right, they give evidence against him on the ground of its still being

a dark age where vulgar prejudices so far prevail as to consider laws as necessary to the well being of society. …

(II, Letter XV, 197)

Knowing that he is probably to be hanged, they cheerfully leave him, saying, “… be comforted Timothy! The age of reason approaches” (II, Letter XV, 197).

Like the other philosophers staying at Ardent Hall—men like Dr. Vapour and Dr. Sceptic—Axiom and Puzzledorf are atheists, and though each has his own “system” the “systems” are all made up of travesties of Godwin's ideas. Gratitude is a crime (II, Letter XV, 211); chastity a weakness (II, Letter XV, 213); no man should need to toil for another (II, Letter XV, 212); decay and disease can be prevented by an effort of the mind (II, Letter XV, 215); and eventually people will be able to do without food and clothing. The limit of absurdity is reached when it is suggested to Mr. Vapour that women, at least, may find it difficult to do without food and clothing:

“Women!” repeated Mr. Vapour, with a contemptuous smile; “We shall not then be troubled with women. In the age of reason the world shall contain only a race of men!”

(II, Letter XV, 215)

Absurdity, however, turns to Swiftian horror when the philosophers attempt, by a species of conditioning, to turn sparrows into honey-bees by putting them into a kind of hive—an experiment which ends in the death of hundreds of birds (II, Letter XVI, 226-237).

The long conversations of this band of types seem to provide a model for the Peacockian novel, and produce a form of fiction which Northrop Frye has usefully defined as Menippean satire or “anatomy”:

The Menippean satire deals less with people as such than with mental attitudes. … [I]ts characterisation … is stylised rather than naturalistic and presents people as mouthpieces of the ideas they represent. A constant theme in the tradition is the ridicule of the philosophus gloriosus. … [It] relies on the free play of intellectual fancy and the kind of humorous observation that produces caricature.¹⁵

Among Menippean satirists he includes Rabelais, Voltaire, Swift, Sterne, Samuel Butler, and Peacock, whose satire is the nearest in this group to that of Mrs. Hamilton. Hers, however, at times strikes a much grimmer note than Peacock's, for she seems to have sensed an urgent need for an answer to republicanism and atheism. Though his occasional misinterpretations of events are highly amusing, the Rajah is no fool, and he believes that of the many religions prevalent in England

Christianity (as it is set forth in the Shaster [Scriptures]) has the smallest number of votaries; and … is fast journeying to oblivion.

(II, Letter XV, 202)

Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah was a great success—but this was no time for the moralist to relax. In the same year appeared several radical novels, two of them clever enough to be highly dangerous: Robert Bage's Hermsprong and Mrs. Inchbald's Nature and Art. A third, Mary Hays's Memoirs of Emma Courtney, was at least sensational, telling of a passionate woman who thought it no shame to declare her love. Exasperated, Mrs. Hamilton immediately began a new novel, containing a much fuller attack on “the new philosophy.” Illness delayed publication, however, and Memoirs of Modern Philosophers did not appear till 1800, under the quickly exploded pseudonym of Geoffry Jarvis.¹⁶ Its success was immediate. According to Mrs. Elwood:

Such was the popularity of this work, that she at once became distinguished and celebrated in the literary world. …¹⁷

By this time, Mrs. Hamilton had moved far enough towards the Evangelicals to allow one of her more admirable characters to say

though I am far from being an advocate for enthusiasm, yet I think it must be confessed that the general sobriety of manners and orderly conduct of the lower classes in North Britain is a strong testimony in favour of their instructors.

(I, XVII, 225-226)

Offered as the manuscript of a young man who died in poverty, Memoirs of Modern Philosophers reveals the intimate association between the novel supporting the church and that supporting conservative politics by declaring itself to be championing

the cause of religion and virtue … in opposition to the opinions generally known by the name of the New Philosophy.

(Introductory Letter, p. xiii)

And this it does, quite often in highly amusing fashion, taking time also to aim shafts both at the false picture of life given in the circulating library novel and at the danger of uncontrolled imagination. It is not, however, so satisfying as a complete work as was Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah, in which the Rajah's letters were for the most part little moral essays, very eighteenth-century in flavor, and completely right in tone. Here, though Mrs. Hamilton without doubt attempts the novel, characters whose depiction is meant to be taken seriously are mixed with the “types” of the Menippean satire, and the combination is not successful. Moreover, though the plot is slight, the novel is padded out with moral disquisitions, with serious or humorous sketches of characters' lives, and with extraneous incidents meant only to reinforce the didactic purpose. Jane Austen must have rejoiced at the sentiments and the humor, and shuddered at the lack of artistry.

Memoirs has three heroines, two of whom might be seen as crude essays in the character-types which, with Jane Austen, were to develop into the living creations of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Like Elinor, of whom we learn immediately that “her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them” (Sense and Sensibility, I, I, 6), Harriet Orwell has strong affections but is able to “controul the feelings of her well-regulated mind” (II, I, 10). Self-control was a virtue so highly regarded by the Evangelicals that it was to provide the title of one of the most popular Evangelical novels of the period. According to Mrs. More:

those secret habits of self-control, those interior and unobtrusive virtues, which excite no astonishment, kindle no emulation and extort no praise, are at the same time the most difficult, and the most sublime. …

And according to Thomas Gisborne, “The true secret of happiness is to learn to place delight in the performance of duty.” This he called “the temper of a genuine Christian.”¹⁸ When Harriet falls in love, therefore, her behavior, like Elinor Dashwood's, is exemplary. She wishes to marry Dr. Henry Sydney, but as he has no means apart from what his profession brings him she accepts, sadly but without protest, the advice of her aunt that marriage must not be thought of in the circumstances. Reason must prevail:

In the struggle of contending passions, the heart that is determined to submit to no law but that of duty will ever come off victorious.

(II, IV, 140)

This kind of advice featured quite frequently in novels of the early nineteenth century, most often given by characters obviously meant to be approved. In this case, Harriet's aunt is a saintly figure, who dies breathing the words

Blessed be the name of that merciful God who from my earliest youth has been my hope and my stay and who is now about to be my portion for ever! Amen, amen.

(II, IV, 120)

Of this Mrs. Hamilton remarked:

Who can read it, and not exclaim with the son of Balak, “Let me die, the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!”

(II, IV, 121)

The same kind of advice on marriage is given to Henry Sydney—and by a woman who is described in a way that suggests she represents Elizabeth Hamilton herself. She tells Sydney that he was wrong to propose marriage to Harriet when he had no money:

pray, if she had listened to you, what would have been the consequence? Years may elapse before your profession enables you to maintain a wife in a style of common decency.

(II, XIV, 371)

Mrs. Hamilton then proceeds to prove the principle of Harriet and Henry by separating them, though she soon afterwards rewards their bowing to duty and reason by providing the financial security they need to marry—a typical outcome of lovers' self-control in novels of the time.¹⁹

Harriet's self-control and obedience to duty are, of course, firmly attributed to her education in religious principle, something the second heroine, Julia Delmond (the “Marianne” character) lacks, because she has been brought up by a father who believes that religion is “a very proper thing for the common people” but “quite beneath the notice of a gentleman” (I, XII, 125). Her mother is phlegmatic, unthinking, and as the Evangelicals would have said a mere “nominal Christian,” who has allowed her daughter's imagination to take control of her reason, by allowing her to read the wrong kinds of novels. With such an upbringing, Julia has fallen easy prey to a group of “new philosophers” which includes two men with the obvious type names of Glib and Myope, a French adventuress whom they call the Goddess of Reason, and a young man called Vallaton, who easily deceives Julia into believing that he is a foundling of noble parentage. All of her thoughts move in the grooves left by circulating library novels. For example, when she finds that a suitor other than Vallaton has been proposed for her, she immediately chooses to regard herself as persecuted—though there is no question of her being coerced:

her fate was cruel, but it was not unexampled. From all that she had read, she had rather cause to esteem herself peculiarly fortunate in being so long exempted from the common misfortune of her sex. Few novels furnished an example of any young woman who had been permitted to attain her nineteenth year, without having been distressed by the addresses of a numberless train of admirers. … Where was the female possessed of any tolerable share of beauty who had not been persecuted by a cruel, hard-hearted father?

(II, X, 265-266)

Julia is portrayed humorously, but with a light, teasing humor—unlike the third heroine, Bridget Botherim, who is completely burlesqued, being portrayed in eighteenth-century caricature style as something of a grotesque. Not only is she abnormally short, she waddles, has a cast in one eye, a twist in her left shoulder, a long craggy neck, and shrivelled, parchment-like skin. Frequently she is placed in farcical situations, at one stage losing her wig in a filthy gutter and at another, in the middle of a soliloquy on love, being surrounded by a drove of pigs. Not very intelligent, she has been spoiled by her mother; like Julia she has been allowed to read novels indiscriminately (one of the most hackneyed situations in the novel of the period)²⁰ and she has fallen victim to the same “new philosophers.”

From these “philosophers” Bridget learns that if a woman loves she should not hesitate to declare her feelings and to pursue the object of her affections with all the energy in her being. (Energy was a favorite word of the philosophers, as is noted below.) This lesson she eagerly accepts, her words and subsequent actions clearly revealing her to be a caricature of one of Godwin's disciples, Mary Hays, whose autobiographical novel Memoirs of Emma Courtney had recently created a sensation by apparently advocating such behavior.²¹ Unfortunately for him Bridget's chosen love is Henry Sydney, and when he goes to London to try to improve his financial prospects so that he can marry Harriet she follows him there.

Up to this point the novel has been almost entirely humorous, shading in tone from quiet domestic humor to high farce. Now, however, the tone changes, for Julia too is in London, having been seduced by Vallaton, and her adventure is to end in tragedy, while Bridget, treated entirely as a figure of fun almost to the last, is merely to become a sadder and wiser young lady. Inconstancy of tone is in fact the novel's major weakness. Excesses of sensibility are laughed at at one moment, while the language and sentiments of sensibility are used quite seriously at another. Bridget is being mocked when she effuses:

Give me the wild extatic wanderings of imagination, the solemn sorrows of suffocating sensibility! Oh how I doat on the gloomy ravings of despair, or delicious description of the soul-melting sensations of fierce and ardent love.

(II, III, 80)

But there are other episodes in which the use of such language has no satiric intent, as when Julia, abandoned by Vallaton, pregnant, and dying in a home for destitute women, is asked if she would like to see Harriet and says

“Harriet Orwell! … ah! no, no, Harriet Orwell would now disdain to look on the poor forlorn Julia!”

“My Julia! my dear Julia! my sweet friend!” cried Harriet, who had only waited for a signal to approach her, and clasping her in her arms imprinted an affectionate kiss on her pale cheek: “Never never will your friend Harriet forsake you!” Sighs and tears choaked her utterance; while Julia, with all the strength she had left, strained her to her bosom.

(III, XII, 276)

Difficult though it is to understand how the sensible and witty Mrs. Hamilton could write in this way,²² the fact is that the scene was well received. The British Critic, for example, found that

The catastrophe of Julia … is tremendous, but touched with a most judicious hand.²³

Death-bed scenes were a popular legacy from the novel of sensibility, but they were also being seized on by the evangelicals because of their obvious potential for teaching or reinforcing a moral lesson.²⁴ Julia's death gives a dire warning, in contrast to the “holy death” (noted earlier) of Harriet's aunt, Miss Sydney, which is accompanied by a footnote saying that it was drawn “from real life.” Such scenes (fictitious parallels of those from real life found throughout the letters of Hannah More and her friends)²⁵ became so popular that they were retained in the Victorian novel, even when there was no moral to be drawn. Here, however, one result of the shifts from satire to such sentimentality is that on occasion it is very difficult to decide whether or not a humorous effect is intended. For example, at a moment of suspense about Julia the reactions of her father (given to tears and sensibility) and her mother (portrayed throughout as phlegmatic to a degree) are so different as to produce an effect of comic bathos:

“Where is my daughter? Why is she not returned? Oh! I read it in your face—I have lost my child and am forever miserable!”

Here the poor father sunk back in his chair in speechless agony.

“Dear me!” said Mrs. Delmond, laying down her knitting.

(I, XIX, 299-300)

Were this Jane Austen, the passage could have come only from her Minor Works—and the reader would have had no doubt that she was laughing. Here, despite Mrs. Hamilton's very real sense of the ludicrous, one can only believe that she was writing in all seriousness.

Just as jarring as the mixture of the sentimental and the burlesqued is the juxtaposition of burlesqued passages with the overtly religious passages which Mrs. Hamilton in her role as propagator of Christian morality inserted as the raison d'être of the novel. Contrasted with the atheism of the philosophers and their converts is the Christianity of some of the other leading characters, as was noted earlier in relation to Harriet's aunt, and the novel supplies in various guises many sermons, such as that given by Harriet to Julia just before her elopement, which runs into fifteen pages and partly takes the form of a debate upon “the wisdom and efficacy of repentance” (II, II, 52). In fact, none of the major characters is anything but a puppet created to serve a propagandist purpose—and while this is acceptable to the modern reader in the “Menippean satire” sequences, it is not in the others. This seems to have become apparent to Mrs. Hamilton herself: she not only saw that her novel had faults but apparently realized that these were inherent in the structure of the work, since she wrote to a friend as soon as it was finished that she was not pleased with it but could not see how to alter it without completely rewriting it.²⁶

Yet it is surprising that her artistry was so flawed, for she was obviously aware of contemporary weaknesses in technique, such as stereotyped features in the behavior of heroes and heroines. For example, when Henry is ill we are told that

(contrary to the usual practices of lovers in similar circumstances) he had not, during his delirium, once mentioned the name of Harriet …

(III, VIII, 190)

And Bridget (or Bridgetina as she prefers to be called) soliloquizes “in the manner of all heroines” (I, XVIII, 247). She was also fully aware of how hackneyed were the phrases of the circulating library novel, letting Henry's sister say “in the language of novelists, I shall resume my pen” (II, XV, 376). She mock-seriously discussed the ways open to her of introducing characters, spent part of the concluding chapter on an imaginary conversation on how a novel should be ended, and even gave a recipe which with one or two simple variations would painlessly produce a novel:

Note, for the benefit of Novel-writers—We here generously present the fair manufacturers in this line with a set of phrases which, if carefully mixed up with a handful of story, a pretty quantity of moonshine, an old house of any kind, so that it be in sufficient decay, and well tenanted with bats and owls, will make a couple of very neat volumes. Or should the sentimental be preferred to the descriptive, it is only leaving out the ghosts, bats, owls and moonlight, and the above phrases will season any tender tale to taste.

(III, IV, 103)

Such penetrating awareness of the weaknesses of fellow novelists did not prevent her from making artistic errors of her own; yet, when all has been said of the weaknesses of Memoirs of Modern Philosophers as a novel, it is not difficult to see why contemporary readers appreciated it. In the first place many of Mrs. Hamilton's digressions are interesting in themselves, becoming, like those of Fielding and Sterne, part of the very art of the work:²⁷ we find her quite blandly saying, “To return to our narrative” (e.g., I, IX, 57) or “But to return” (e.g., I, XI, 109), a method which is used also (often in the middle of a chapter) to shift the scene suddenly from one character to another, with a casualness which is disarming, as for example when she writes:

It is high time to return to Bridgetina, to whom, as the ostensible heroine of these memoirs it is our duty to attend.

(III, XIV, 330)

Such direct addresses to the reader are frequent, but Mrs. Hamilton's company is usually very pleasant. Her narrative style, while occasionally careless,²⁸ is easy and familiar, having a flavor more of the eighteenth than of the nineteenth century—though that eighteenth-century flavor is rarely as strong as in the following passage, when Henry is wondering whether Harriet will accept him for himself alone, without money:

“She will”, said Hope. “No, no”, said trembling Apprehension, “you have no right to expect it.” “Then she is lost to you forever!” said Despondency.

(III, VII, 184)

And if the speech of the well-to-do characters is stilted, that of the others is usually quite natural. The uneducated Mrs. Botherim, for example, says to Bridget:

I wish to goodness, Biddy … that you would talk in a way that a body could understand. When you get into one of them there tanterums there is no getting any good of you. I had as lieve be in a room all by myself.

(I, XVIII, 247)

But above all the novel is readable because its shafts hit their targets in often hilarious fashion. Nor need readers be deeply soaked in the theories of Godwin in order to enjoy the fun; Mrs. Hamilton supplies enough information about them to make the satire perfectly comprehensible. “Philosophizing” itself is made to seem a ludicrous activity: the convert Bridgetina even takes her meals philosophically “at what time the energies of her stomach requir[e] it” (III, I, 8), but she is utterly incapable of doing anything. Favorite catchwords of the philosophers are “necessity,” “general utility,” and especially “energy”; they expect a time to come when men will be sufficiently enlightened to cure all diseases by the exertion of their energies,²⁹ and even think energy can cure broken bones:

Energies are the only true doctors. Energies do all. Energies cheat the undertaker and make a man live forever. Never mind broken bones. All trifles to philosophers. …

(II, I, 25)

This brings little comfort to Vallaton, who has just been injured in a carriage accident.

Another favorite concept of the philosophers is “equality,” which Bridgetina preaches with vigor: this Mrs. Hamilton counters with both seriousness and humor. Henry's father (who like Henry's patroness, Mrs. Fielding, seems to speak for the authoress) believes “a perfect equality of conditions to be impracticable and absurd”—but sees as obvious

the advantage that would result to society from such a dissemination of the wealth of a country as should render the extremes of wealth and poverty unknown. …

(III, X, 238-239)

Harriet's father likewise feels that the very real hardships of the poor are caused by “luxury,” the “superfluous riches” of some (I, XVI, 216). However, while kindness to the poor is stressed, there is no idea of egalitarianism, and the hypocrisy Mrs. Hamilton obviously saw in the egalitarianism of the new philosophers is brought out in a scene where Bridgetina, the advocate of equality, objects to Julia's father's devoted servant, old Quentin, sitting in the same room as herself. She tells the astonished Julia that though her philosophy preaches equality

the age of reason is not yet far enough advanced for people to desire their servants to sit down in the same room with them.

(II, VI, 188)

A similar deflation is given to Godwin's belief that there is no such thing as crime. Vallaton, having by underhand machinations deliberately sent to the guillotine an innocent man whom he has defrauded, argues thus with himself:

I am but a machine in the hand of fate. … Nothing but what has happened could have happened. Everything that is, must inevitably be; and the causes of this old man's death were generated in the eternity that preceded his birth.

(I, IX, 82)

Likewise, when he absconds with the funds of a committee which the philosophers have set up to form a Utopian community in Africa, Myope argues:³⁰

Mr. Vallaton no doubt perceived a degree of fitness in appropriating those sums to himself which a man of more confined intellect might not have discovered.

(III, XI, 262)

He quickly changes his mind, however, when he finds that Vallaton has run off not only with the money but with his mistress, Emmeline, the Goddess of Reason.

Another of the philosophers, Glib, is revealed also to be criminally minded, in an episode designed to show the absurdity of the theory that all property should be held in common and that gratitude is therefore unnecessary. Accepting this doctrine wholeheartedly, Bridgetina objects to paying her lodging bill:

“Unnatural state of civilization!” cried Bridgetina. … “Odious and depraved society, where everything one eats or drinks or wears must necessarily be paid for …”

(III, V, 140)

—and when she sees on a shop in London a sign saying “money lent,” she assumes that the shop's owner, Mr. Poppem, must be a philosopher, who will deem it a duty to give her what she needs. Poppem soon disabuses her of this idea, and Glib, who then pawns her watch for her, helps himself to five pounds of the proceeds while doing so, on the grounds of his own “necessity” (III, V, 149).

As might be expected with such “progressives,” of course, a concept of duty such as that held by Jane Austen's Anne Elliot is regarded as utterly foolish; parental authority is seen as a “slavish and unnatural yoke” (II, II, 40). And while Harriet Orwell's filial love is specifically noted, the pathetic Julia is persuaded

to set an example of moral rectitude, by throwing off the ignoble chains of filial duty. …

(II, X, 282)

Bridgetina, in contrast to both of the other girls, needs little or no persuading, and her lapse from both duty and propriety is treated in highly burlesqued style, as she says to her horrified London landlady:

I … shall be much obliged to you for an introduction to any heroine who has nobly sacrificed the bauble—reputation. Pray, have you any acquaintance in this line?

(III, I, 4)³¹

Mrs. Hamilton was never again, however, to capture the lightness of touch of parts of Memoirs of Modern Philosophers, for in 1801, with her Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education, the schoolmistress took over. These letters were deservedly popular,³² outlining in simple prose her own eclectic version of the best of the modern ideas on education, based on a study of the development of the human mind and stressing the importance both of the very early years and of religious education. It was in order to gain an even wider audience for these ideas that she wrote her next work, Memoirs of the Life of Agrippina (1804). This, normally classed as a novel, Mrs. Hamilton declared firmly not to be one, saying (rather oddly since she had already used fiction for didactic purposes and was to do so again) that fiction would not fully serve her end:

A work of imagination, in which the characters are of the author's own creation, and in which every event is at his disposal, may be so managed, as to be admirably calculated to promote the reception of a favourite theory, but can never be considered as confirmation of its truth.

(Preface xi)

Her earliest biographer, Mrs. Benger, also firmly rejected any idea that Agrippina was a novel:

Agrippina is preposterously classed with novels; and an opinion has been commonly entertained that it is, in reality, a sort of biographical romance. No idea could be more unfounded. The author, directed by her learned friends, was indefatigable in collecting documents and procuring materials for an authentic work. Through the medium of translation, she had been conversant with the best historians, annalists, poets, and orators of ancient Rome; and she was guided by the most esteemed modern writers on the subject of antiquities, laws, and usages. When doubts or difficulties occurred, she communicated her scruples to the scholar or philosopher who was most competent to resolve them. Far from indulging in fictitious embellishments, she has not even attempted to fill up the chasm occasionally left in the narrative; and she was careful to substantiate every fact by reference to classical authority.³³

Nevertheless, from its first appearance some readers and critics have regarded it as being an attempt at a historical novel. The Monthly Magazine, for example, said reprovingly:

We cannot approve of this mixing fact and fable; they are not likely to be separated by young persons; history ought not to be read in the disguise of a novel. Miss Hamilton, however, has preserved the character and costume of the times she represents …³⁴

The Annual Review doubted “the expediency of composing historic novels.”³⁵ Montague Summers even included it in his Gothic Bibliography (1940), though anyone less of a gothic novelist than Mrs. Hamilton it would be difficult to imagine, the book's macabre train of treachery, poisoning, suicide, and death by deliberate starvation all being vouched for in the annals of the period. Her sources were Velleius Paterculus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Dion Cassius,³⁶ and of these Tacitus was beyond doubt her major source; indeed, in a letter asking for advice on reading for her book she said

It was the perusal of Tacitus in Murphy's translation which first excited the idea in my mind. …³⁷

Thus, while volume one of Agrippina is largely a general background to the period, taken from several sources, all the skeleton and much of the flesh of volume two is taken directly from Books 1-3 of Tacitus's Annals of Imperial Rome, and most of volume three from Books 3-6 of this work. What Mrs. Hamilton seems to have done is to have extrapolated all the incidents involving Agrippina, filling out the account from other classical sources where she is mentioned and using the resulting narrative as a text on which to make moral reflections. The words spoken by the characters are often either directly from or paraphrased from Tacitus, and even certain scenes which might at first seem to have been adapted to suit an early-nineteenth-century sensibility are substantiated in the text, such as the following in which Germanicus, Agrippina's husband, weeps on sending her away from him to safety. What the passage also illustrates, however, is the way in which concessions are made to fiction, for the following lines of Tacitus are elaborated into three pages for Agrippina:

Descended from Augustus, [Agrippina] insisted that the granddaughter of that emperor had not so far degenerated as to shrink from danger. Germanicus continued to urge his request; he melted into tears; he clasped her in his arms; he embraced her infant son, and at length prevailed.³⁸

This becomes:

“I thank you, Germanicus, I thank our noble friends,” cried Agrippina indignantly, “for imagining that the descendant of Augustus, the daughter of Vipsanius Agrippa, has so far degenerated as to shrink from danger. By what part of my conduct have I deserved a treatment so injurious? In what instance have I departed from the character of a Roman matron, that I should thus be called on to desert my husband in the storm, and to provide for my own safety by dastardly and ignominious flight?”

“No,” replied Germanicus mildly, “no, my love. It is not for your own sake, it is for mine that I conjure you to go. While you remain in this scene of tumult and disorder, I am truly miserable, nor can I answer for the consequence. To manage the unruly passions of the multitude, when once they have broken the bounds prescribed by authority, requires the utmost command of temper and of prudence. Should any insult be offered to you, these would instantly be lost. No longer master of myself, I could not avoid giving way to the fury of resentment, and by so doing might involve us both in ruin.”

Agrippina remained inexorable. “You would have me go,” said she to Germanicus reproachfully, “because you can bear with patience the disgrace of being thought unable to protect me. But in my eyes life is not so precious as to be preserved at the expense of honour; and rather would I with this hand put a period to my existence, than hear it said, that the wife of Germanicus was obliged to seek a refuge with the barbarians.”

At these words the prince caught Caligula in his arms, and pressing him to his bosom, melted into tears. Agrippina, overcome by this proof of tenderness, threw her arms round his neck, and gave way to those emotions which her high spirit could no longer suppress. “Yes,” cried Germanicus, embracing her, “yes my Agrippina, it is on you that the lives, the safety of our offspring now depend. Let me adjure you by your love for this boy, by your regard for the unborn babe, whose fate is involved in your decision, to comply with my request. Had no insubordination prevailed, I should have wished you to have removed to the neighbouring city of the Ubii, before the period of your confinement; but as things now are, it would in your situation be madness to remain.”

Agrippina, no longer able to resist entreaties urged with so much tenderness, assented to the proposal as an instance of duty and obedience.

(Vol. I, VIII, 244-247)

It was only in such elaborations and in the addition (to which she admits in the Preface, xxxii-xxxiii) of one or two domestic scenes, which do not distort the facts of Agrippina's life in any way but merely provide a social background gained from “the most authentic describers of ancient manners” (xxxiii), that Mrs. Hamilton departed from “fact.” Nevertheless, slight as they are, these are concessions to fiction, and since Agrippina was seen as a novel and yet was so factually detailed, including lengthy notes on such matters as the function of the vestal virgins, gladiatorial shows, and the Saturnalia, it must have encouraged the tendency to documentation and attempt at accuracy of detail which was to be one of the features of the novel of the period. Just as significant, while it must have seemed a historical novel very different from most which had gone before, namely one researched in a scholarly way,³⁹ it sprang not from an imaginative desire to recreate the past but purely from the contemporary spirit of reform in religious practice. Interpolated comments on the action are frequent, and (in accordance with the reasons given for writing the book) the development of each of the major characters is related to his early education, even those who are said to have been brought up in the best way possible to the times being shown as laboring under the disadvantage of not having learned Christian principles. Yet this in itself contributed to historical accuracy, since as was noted earlier there is little tendency to credit the characters with early-nineteenth-century sensibilities. Agrippina, for instance, is able to watch scenes in the arena without a qualm.

So full of Christian teaching is Agrippina, in fact, that in the year of its publication Mrs. Hamilton was granted a pension by George III, not for her services to literature but “in consideration that her talents had ever been exerted in the cause of religion and virtue.”⁴⁰ This cause was further promoted by her Letters to the Daughter of a Nobleman on the Formation of the Religious and Moral Principle (1806),⁴¹ in which Evangelical influence seems apparent in the emphasis on Sunday observance (II, Letter III), the workings of Providence (II, Letters II and III), humility (I, Letter XI; II, Letters II and XI), self-control (I, Letter I), and particularly on the need for active Christian principle, which was to play so important a part in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (I, Letter II).

By this time Mrs. Hamilton's reputation was such that The Critical Review began its account of her next novel, The Cottagers of Glenburnie, by saying:

the name of Miss Elizabeth Hamilton would alone be sufficient to recommend the book before us …

and expressed itself as “highly delighted” with the “most excellent tale”; The Scots Magazine wrote that it had “excited an extraordinary sensation in Edinburgh.”⁴² Fulfilling most of the requirements of the critics in being “probable,” “natural,” and “moral,” Glenburnie also pleased the public by having two comparatively new things to offer: an authentically described Scottish setting and a predominant concern with working-class life, which had not in the eighteenth century been considered fitting as a major concern of a novel.⁴³

Yet it is possible that Mrs. Hamilton was largely unaware of the scope or significance of her innovations, for Glenburnie became a full length novel almost by accident. What she originally planned to write was a series of short and simple moral tracts which, being merely for the improvement of the working people of her own country, would naturally be about Scotland and about the working class, and there was nothing unusual in the production of tracts dealing with working-class characters. Following on the success of her Village Politics in 1792, Hannah More had been persuaded to write further “improving” short works aimed to instill into the “lower orders” religious principle and allegiance to the status quo. According to her earliest biographer

Being aware that sermons, catechisms and other articles of preceptive piety were abundantly furnished by the excellent institutions already formed, she preferred what was novel and striking to what was merely didactic. As the school of Paine had been labouring to undermine not only religious establishments but good government by the alluring vehicle of novels, stories and songs, she thought it right to fight them with their own weapons.⁴⁴

Thus, between 1795 and 1798, helped by friends and one of her sisters, she published large numbers of what were known as Cheap Repository Tracts, of which two million copies were sold in the first year.⁴⁵ Similar in size and appearance to the existing chap-books and ballads, they sold at one, two, or three half-pence each, their scope as fiction being at times increased by a story's having several parts: for example, though Tawney Rachel (a tale of a fortune teller) had only one part, Black Giles the Poacher, The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, The History of Hester Wilmot, and The History of Idle Jack Brown each had two parts—while The Two Wealthy Farmers had seven. These tracts opened up a new world of working-class life to the middle classes, who though not the audience aimed at bought them eagerly.⁴⁶

After Hannah More's initial success, the Religious Tract Society was founded in 1799, and others like Rowland Hill with his Village Dialogues (1810) and Legh Richmond with his Annals of the Poor (1809-14) followed her example. This in fact is what Mrs. Hamilton too at first intended to do, as she admitted in her Preface to Glenburnie (p. vi). However, she changed her mind, deciding to use the same kind of material to write a tale instead of a tract, for though many writers used the term “tale” for a three-volume novel with a moral purpose merely to differentiate it from the ordinary three-volume novel, the word was also used to define something not too far removed from the longer tract—a didactic story, naturalistic in detail, usually not more than one volume long, and of which the essential interest was not love.⁴⁷

How far Mrs. Hamilton was aware of the implications for the novel of what she was doing in making Glenburnie a tale is difficult to say. But she was certainly aware of the ignorance of the English about the Scots, and had made Bridgetina's mother in Memoirs of Modern Philosophers ask the hero how he could think of trusting himself “among them there Scotch savages,” adding, “I would not have wondered if they had murdered you” (I, XVII, 219-220). Since Smollett's attempt to introduce Scotland to English readers in Humphry Clinker (1770), little had been done in this line in fiction, for though several novels (like Mrs. Radcliffe's Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, 1789) had been vaguely set in Scotland, the action could have taken place anywhere. That Mrs. Hamilton realized the potential in conveying Scottish life to the English is evident in the fact that one long chapter of Memoirs was devoted to the hero's description of his recent tour of Scotland (I, XVII).⁴⁸ The picture given, however, seems for the most part clearly idealized—a prose version of Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night. Moreover, being merely recounted as something seen in the past, however recent, it lacks immediacy and makes little impact. The Cottagers of Glenburnie, however, with its vivid and dramatically portrayed scenes of peasant life, was very different, and with its publication Mrs. Hamilton was recognized as a regional novelist, The Edinburgh Review commenting:

We have not met with anything nearly so good as this since we read Castle Rackrent and the Popular Tales of Miss Edgeworth. This contains as admirable a picture of the Scotish peasantry as those do of the Irish. …⁴⁹

Scott, writing later in the postscript to Waverley, awarded Mrs. Hamilton the credit of being the first to describe Scottish life naturally. Recounting how he had wanted “in some distant degree to emulate the admirable Irish portraits drawn by Miss Edgeworth,” he told how he wrote Waverley, then laid it aside for several years, during which time appeared “Two works upon similar subjects by female authors whose genius is highly creditable to their country.” One of these was Mrs. Anne Grant's Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland (1811), which is not a work of fiction, the other The Cottagers of Glenburnie. While Scott noted that the latter was different from his own work in being confined to the rural habits of Scotland, he praised the portrayal for its “striking and impressive fidelity.”

The evangelical tract, then, can be seen to have had a great innovating influence on prose fiction of the period, with its simple language, detailed naturalistic description, a new social scene, low life, and the possibility of a great variety of new subject matter⁵⁰—for the tracts were based on matters familiar to the folk for whom they were intended. Margaret Maison has suggested that

the longer type of Evangelical tract, known as the “tale,” was in fact the forerunner of the Victorian religious novel. …⁵¹

But it was the forerunner of other kinds of novels too, for while Glenburnie has a strong religious element and an emphasis on order, discipline and the right kind of education, since Mrs. Hamilton also wanted to impress on Scottish housewives the virtues of soap and water and a regular household routine, it is the tale's naturalistic domestic details that are memorable.

It is often forgotten, however, that The Cottagers of Glenburnie is not just about low life. Knowing that she could expect to draw on a middle-class audience (preface, vi), Mrs. Hamilton added to her story sections set in upper- and middle-class life by means of making the central figure, Mrs. Mason, a working-class woman who has risen from being merely a servant to the rich to the position of governess.⁵² Now retired, she is intending to visit relatives in Glenburnie when the tale begins, but on the way stops to visit relatives of one of her late employers, a family of the name of Stewart, who are in genteelly reduced circumstances. Here the situation is one only too familiar in novels of the period, involving two motherless girls, one a model of obedience, the other, Bell, entirely lacking in “fixed and solid principle” (XV, 322) as she has been over-indulged by her grandmother and further spoiled by a snobbish boarding school education which has caused her to value people for their social position rather than their intrinsic worth.⁵³ It is obvious that Bell's pride must take a fall, but the situation is not immediately developed, for in chapters two to five Mrs. Mason “tells her story,” narrating with irritating self-righteousness her whole history, from the childhood in which she learned Christian principle to the present, and discussing her views on the right and wrong kind of education by reference to rich people for whom she has worked. Thus it is not till chapter six that the poor relatives with whom she intends to stay, the unforgettable MacClartys, are introduced. Her abortive attempts to reform their slovenly ways and discipline the children are then presented without interruption. Following this, to conclude the novel, the reader is returned for two chapters to the Stewarts, to find that Bell, predictably, has made the fatal mistake of running away (without benefit of marriage) with one of her fine friends. The realism of the central section vanishes as Mrs. Mason shows herself able to unmask the dashing Romeo as the son of the shoemaker in her home village, though the story takes a less expected turn when the “villain” (who has now married Bell) turns out to be less rogue than fool and to be really in love with his now very chastened bride. All that remains is for the last three chapters to wind up events by showing how Mrs. Mason, having directed her efforts to another family, converts the whole village (except for the MacClartys) to industry and cleanliness with startling rapidity (indeed almost like a fairytale godmother waving a wand). Much of this, the reader is asked to believe, is due to a new system of education introduced by Mrs. Mason with the aid of her protegé William Morison, who is instructed in his duties by the vicar in the penultimate chapter, appropriately entitled “Hints concerning the Duties of a Schoolmaster.”⁵⁴

Praise for the work was immediate and universal. But it is regrettable that Mrs. Hamilton did not feel confident enough to focus entirely on her village community, for that she saw that as the main concern of her tale is clearly implied by the epigraph:

Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure,
Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.(55)

This was obviously what the reviewers liked, for while they gave due praise to the tale's good sense—The Critical Review rather incredibly commenting that

Miss Hamilton merits most transcendent praise for making the fictitious narrative of a novel subservient to the increase of cleanliness and industry⁵⁶

—they found fault with the episodes set in upper- and middle-class life, which are just as full of “sense.” The Annual Review thought Mrs. Mason's story dull, The Edinburgh Review noted the two subsidiary sections as weaknesses, while The Scots Magazine said of the two “underplots” as it called them:

Both these sketches have merit … neither however possess [sic] the liveliness and originality of the scenes of which Mrs. MacClarty is the heroine, so that upon the whole, they break the unity of the work without materially adding to the value.⁵⁷

And it is the MacClartys who are still interesting today. John Millar commented:

That the McClarty [sic] household is, in the long run, redeemed from unnecessary dirt and squalor was probably to the writer the cardinal feature in the book; but it is in their unregenerate state that they awaken the interest of the modern reader.⁵⁸

But in fact the MacClartys are not “redeemed,” and it is their refusal to be so that is one of the things that makes them so credible. For a while the daughters of the family do try Mrs. Mason's new-fangled methods—and even praise them—but the effort is too much, and they slip back into their old ways. Indeed, if Mrs. Hamilton originally intended to show the reformation of the MacClartys, for once she found life and probability too strong to be forced into a pedagogic pattern. She was therefore reduced, in the closing chapters, to introducing a suitably docile pasteboard couple, who round off the novel satisfactorily by becoming Mrs. Mason's disciples in spreading the gospel of order, cleanliness, and discipline in Glenburnie.

It is the authenticity of the central section which is the book's greatest merit, and it would be a very skeptical reader who did not believe that Mrs. Hamilton was describing vividly exactly what she had seen. Here, for example, is Mrs. Mason arriving at her relative's home:

It must be confessed that the aspect of the dwelling where she was to fix her residence was by no means inviting. The walls were substantial; built, like the houses in the village, of stone and lime; but they were blackened by the mud which the cart wheels had spattered from the ruts in winter; and on one side of the door completely covered from view by the contents of a great dunghill. On the other, and directly under the window, was a squashy pool, formed by the dirty water thrown from the house, and in it about twenty young ducks were at this time daubling.

At the threshold of the door, room had been left for a paving stone, but it had never been laid; and consequently the place became hollow, to the great advantage of the younger ducklings, who always found in it a plentiful supply of water, in which they could swim without danger. Happily Mr. Stewart was provided with boots, so that he could take a firm step in it, while he lifted Mrs. Mason and set her down in safety within the threshold. But there an unforeseen danger awaited her, for there the great whey pot had stood since morning, that the cheese had been made, [sic] and was at the present moment filled with chickens, who were busily picking at the bits of curd, which had hardened on the sides, and cruelly mocked their wishes. Over this Mr. Stewart and Mrs. Mason unfortunately stumbled. The pot was overturned, and the chickens, cackling with hideous din, flew about in all directions.

(VI, pp. 137-138)⁵⁹

As soon as she crosses the threshold and sees the squalor round her, Mrs. Mason puts all her energies into such matters as clearing out rubbish, washing bedclothes, scrubbing floors, cleaning windows, and getting hairs out of butter—hardly matter for entertainment, one would think—yet human curiosity about the way other people live made this absorbing.

And the family, too, is credible. Although the length of the work does not allow for them to be developed in depth, impressions of most of the individual MacClartys come over strongly, sometimes in touches which, though brief, are vivid. For example, when the youngest son, Henry, has to be chief mourner at his father's funeral because one brother is being held on a charge by the army and the other is ill, we read:

The poor child on whom the office of chief mourner thus devolved looked grave and sad; but he was rather bewildered than sorrowful; and in the midst of tears which he shed, felt an emotion of pleasure from the novelty of the scene.

(XII, 250)

The two girls, Jean and Meg, are lazy; Sandie, the eldest son, is disobedient and headstrong but weak; while Robby, the second son, is an ill-natured boor. The father is merely hardworking, far too tired to bother about whether or not his home is well run or to spend much time in curbing his children. Yet his love for them is never left in doubt, nor (as is indicated by the provisions of his will) his desire to provide for them to the best of his limited ability. But it is his wife who is the most living creation, with her easy, slovenly cheerfulness. Her stubborn refusal to change her ways is perfectly understandable, as are her change from admiration to dislike of her meddling relative and her growing uneasiness at Mrs. Mason's presence:

Jealous of Mrs. Mason's superior sense, and at the same time conscious of the obligations she owed to her unwearied benevolence, she felt her presence as a burthen …

(XIV, 279)

But as Mrs. MacClarty's character gradually unfolds, a mean and covetous side to her nature is seen. After the family's attitude has caused Mrs. Mason to leave, instead of being relieved, Mrs. MacClarty can only think that the Morisons, with whom Mrs. Mason now lives, will inherit her possessions:

I wou'dna wonder that they got every farthing she has in the warld. Scores o' fine silk goons, and grand petticoats and stockings … Ay, ay, the Morisons will get it a', and a' her money forbye. They'll no be the fools to part wi' her that we ha' been; they're o'er cunning for that!

(XIV, 291-292)

Using chiefly these characters and the self-righteous Mrs. Mason (who has an effect quite other than that her creator obviously intended, yet is believable in her very officiousness), with the addition of a “chorus” of villagers, Mrs. Hamilton evokes in a comparatively short space a way of life and death: schooling, butter-making, the local fair, the lure of the army recruiters, a village funeral.⁶⁰ Since Mrs. Mason obviously speaks for Mrs. Hamilton, there are few authorial intrusions into a narrative that includes a great deal of dialogue, much of it in Scots dialect, as for example the following exchange between Mrs. MacClarty and her daughter Jean. The mother is urging her children to hurry to school:

“Are ye no awa yet, bairns! I never saw the like. Sic a fight to get ye to the schul. Nae wonder ye learn little when you're at it. Gae awa, like gude bairns, for there's nae schulin the morn, ye ken, it's the fair day.”

Meg set off after some further parley; but Jean continued to catch flies at the window, taking no notice of her mother's exhortations, though again repeated in pretty nearly the same terms.

“Dear me!” said the mother, “What's the matter wi' the bairn? What for winna ye gang, when Meg's gane? Rin, and ye'll be after her or she wins to the end o' the loan.”

“I'm no ga'an the day,” says Jean, turning away her face. “And what for are no ye ga'an, my dear?” says her mother—“Cause I hinna gotten my questions,” replied Jean.

“O, but ye may gang for a' that,” said her mother; “the maister will no be angry. Gang like a gude bairn.”

“Na,” said Jean, “but he will be angry; for I didno get it the last time either.”

“And what for didna ye get it, my dear?” said Mrs. MacClarty in a soothing tone. “Cause 'twas unco kittle and I cou'd no be fash'd,” replied the hopeful girl, catching as she spoke, another handful of flies.

(VIII, 166-167)

Such dialect The Scots Magazine praised highly as “the purest colloquial Scots,” and contrary to the fears of the critic of the Edinburgh Review its originality did not restrict the public for the book to the Scots.⁶¹ Maria Edgeworth, who knew and liked Mrs. Hamilton, wrote of it to Mrs. Ruxton:

I hasten to send you the Cottagers of Glenburnie; which I hope you will like as well as we do. I think it will do a vast deal of good, and besides it is extremely interesting, which all good books are not: it has great powers, both comic and tragic.⁶²

It is largely by taking into account such praise—which now seems grossly exaggerated—and remembering from whom it came, that one can hope to appreciate the impact which Glenburnie made in its day, for it has not, of course, great powers either comic or tragic. Emotions are roused by the running off of son Sandie to join the army, by his desertion, capture, and threatened execution, and by the fact that in trying to buy his son out of the army Mr. MacClarty is waylaid and beaten, and somehow contracts an unspecified infectious disease which for a time threatens the whole family and of which he eventually dies. The most this achieves, however, is a certain limited pathos, especially as his dying moments are used to allow him to make a lengthy and edifying admission of his failure to educate and discipline his children properly.⁶³

And this is not all the teaching his death is made to yield; it also allows Mrs. Mason to have a meditation on the essential equality of man, in the manner of Gray's Elegy (a stanza from which, it will be recalled, forms the epigraph to the novel). Mrs. Mason compares the humble ceremony, in which the dead man is mourned by loving friends, to that of her late noble employer, who had no one truly to mourn him, in a passage which is not only anti-jacobinical but definitely of an evangelical cast:⁶⁴

Why then should those of lowly station envy the trappings of vanity that are but the boast of a moment, when by piety and virtue they may attain a distinction so much more lasting and glorious? To the humble and the lowly are the gates of Paradise thrown open. Nor is there any other path which leads to them but that which the gospel points out to all. In that path may the grace of God enable me to walk; so that my spirit may join the spirits of the sanctified—the innumerable host, that “out of every tribe, and nation, and language, shall meet together before the throne of the Eternal, to worship, and give praise, and honour and glory, to Him that liveth for ever and ever!”

(Ch. XII, 253-254)

Contining such sound doctrine and a novel setting, it is little wonder that The Cottagers of Glenburnie was as popular in England as in Scotland:

“I canna be fashed” became a popular phrase; and the name of Mrs. M'Clarty was a passport to attention in the polished circles of fashion, of elegance, and beauty.⁶⁵

However, despite its popularity, for the remaining eight years of her life Mrs. Hamilton wrote no more fiction. Exercises in Religious Knowledge (1809) was meant to help young people to understand the catechism rather than merely commit it to memory; A Series of Popular Essays, Illustrative of Principles Essentially Connected with the Improvement of the Understanding, the Imagination, and the Heart (1813) developed in more religious mood her 1801 Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education; while her Hints addressed to the Patrons and Directors of Public Schools (1815) recommended to them the methods of Pestalozzi. By this time she had been in poor health for some years, and on 23rd July 1816 she died.

In her day she was admired by such eminent contemporaries as Maria Edgeworth,⁶⁶ Sir Walter Scott, and Jane Austen. And some ranked her with Maria Edgeworth—or even slightly above, because the morality of her novels was explicitly founded on Christian principles.⁶⁷ Yet Mrs. Hamilton left not a single novel which has stood the test of time. Miriam Allott has said that

In the end we recognize the true novelist by the strength with which his realisation of the actual world and of human individuality triumphs over his abstract speculations, … his puritan concern with the utile.⁶⁸

By this criterion Mrs. Hamilton is no true novelist, for with the exceptions of the Hindoo Rajah and the MacClarty family her characters and stories are entirely at the service of her theories. Thus her work was soon neglected, except for Glenburnie. Of this, in 1833 Allan Cunningham, despite some deprecations, was able to say:

Elizabeth Hamilton, like Madame D'Arblay, paints the passing wants, the fleeting manners and changing condition of social life, but then her pictures are taken from the shepherd's hut and the husbandman's hovel and, amid much that is now past and gone, show not a little of a fixed and permanent nature.⁶⁹

In 1859 David Masson was still calling it “a genuine Scottish story,”⁷⁰ but soon after this it became regarded as “perhaps too distinctly a story written with a purpose … to take a high place in art.”⁷¹ Nevertheless Mrs. Hamilton's literary career is interesting not only in highlighting the achievement of Jane Austen, whose novels were produced from a very similar complex of ideas, but also because in her last experiment in “using” the novel form she (perhaps inadvertently) became both a pioneer Scottish regional novelist and a pioneer novelist of the working classes.⁷² Although she was unable to portray her peasant characters with the sympathetic insight of some later novelists, by proving that fiction could be written about such characters which would be read with interest, she, together with contemporaries like Amelia Opie, encouraged this important development in the novel.

Notes

1. Jane Austen's Letters, 372 (letter of November 6, 1813).

2. A. K. Elwood, Memoirs of the Literary Ladies of England, II, 120.

3. By far the best source of biographical information on Mrs. Hamilton is E. O. Benger's Memoirs of the Late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton (1818).

4. It had a ninth edition in 1832 and was still in print at the end of the century. It was reprinted in 1974 by Garland Press.

5. A. K. Elwood, op. cit., 111.

6. Indeed, V. Colby, in Yesterday's Woman, p. 166, calls her “the evangelical Mrs. Hamilton.”

7. In Glenburnie, ch. XVII, p. 358. This, surely significantly, had been removed by the sixth edition of 1815.

8. Elizabeth O. Benger, Memoirs of the Late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton, I, 183. Of course not only Evangelicals did so; it had, for example, been a practice of Dr. Johnson. However, it was one of the “serious” habits (neglected by most of their contemporaries) which the Evangelicals encouraged. Its use in and effect on the novel is noted in chapter 3.

9. In her Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education, I, 133. Also, she claimed in the preface to Glenburnie that that work was inspired by Mrs. More's Cheap Repository Tracts.

10. As a young girl, she had published in a provincial magazine a journal of a visit to the Highlands, and had written part of a historical novel about Lady Arabella Stewart (E. O. Benger, op. cit., 52-61). In December 1785 she had provided an essay for Lounger 46, intended to reveal how far people were judged by their social position.

11. In her Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society (1788) and her An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World (1791).

12. He had been sent home in 1786 by Warren Hastings, on extended leave with a commission to translate the Moslem laws.

13. Legal and penal reform were areas in which radicals and evangelicals overlapped in attitude. Evangelicals objected to pew rents, and abolished them in their churches.

14. Godwin's ideas may perhaps be crudely summed up by saying that he believed in the perfectibility of man, believed that laws and government might eventually be dispensed with, that all restraints (including that of marriage) might be removed, and that all distinctions of wealth should gradually be done away with and the holding of property equalized.

15. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, pp. 309-310.

16. Preface to the 1804 edition, p. vi. In the meantime the conservative attack had been maintained by others, e.g., Isaac D'Israeli (Vaurien, 1797), Charles Lloyd (Edmund Oliver, 1798), Jane West (A Tale of the Times, 1799), and George Walker (The Vagabond, 1799).

17. A. K. Elwood, op. cit., II, 116.

18. Religion of the Fashionable World, ch. IV, Works, II, 333. Thomas Gisborne, Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex, p. 219 (1816 edition).

19. It is worth noting that Anne Elliot's obedience to the call of duty in Persuasion could have been similarly rewarded, had not Frederick Wentworth's hurt pride refused to allow him to ask for her again when, within a year of her refusal to marry him, his circumstances changed.

20. E.g., see Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote (1752), which was still read; Eaton S. Barrett's The Heroine (1813); Maria Edgeworth's Angelina ou l'Amie Inconnue (1801). The kind of book regarded as dangerous was Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther and Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloise.

21. Interestingly, though Emma is treated sympathetically and though it was the passionate woman who was noted and remembered, the book actually declared itself to be a warning against such behavior.

22. And the agony is piled on: Julia's behavior has killed both of her parents, and she herself is dying because she has taken poison—though it is killing her slowly enough to allow for extended conversations.

23. BC (October 16, 1800), 439.

24. For example, see Margaret Maison, Search Your Soul, Eustace, p. 92; Ian Bradley, The Call to Seriousness, p. 187; and Ford K. Brown, Fathers of the Victorians, p. 457.

25. William Roberts, Memoirs of Hannah More, passim—but see, e.g., II, 327-331.

26. E. O. Benger, op. cit., I, 130.

27. Unlike digressions to give “histories” of characters, some of whom are absolutely peripheral to the plot—e.g., I, XVIII, 1; I, XII, 118-151.

28. E.g., “She exulted in the honour of an annual visit from him which he regularly paid on his way to Buxton every summer” (I, VI, 13).

29. Godwin did actually forecast this in Political Justice (Appendix to Book 8, ch. 9).

30. CR n. s. 29 (July 1800), 311, identifies Myope as a caricature of Godwin himself. One remembers the scheme of Coleridge and Southey in 1794-95, to set up a Utopian community on the banks of the Susquehanna.

31. “The novelist shows his exuberance either by an exhaustive analysis of human relationships, as in Henry James, or of social phenomena, as in Tolstoy. The Menippean satirist, dealing with intellectual themes and attitudes, shows his exuberance in intellectual ways, by piling up an enormous mass of erudition about his theme or in overwhelming his pedantic targets with an avalanche of their own jargon.” Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 311.

32. New editions were called for in 1802, 1803, 1808, 1810, 1818, 1824, and even again in 1837.

33. E. O. Benger, op. cit., I, 161.

34. MM Supplement, July 28, 1805, 660.

35. AnR III, 542.

36. All Roman historians of the first two centuries A.D.

37. E. O. Benger, op. cit., II, 43-44.

38. Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, Book I, Section 40. The quotation is from Arthur Murphy's translation of The Works of Cornelius Tacitus (vol. I, 45) rather than from a modern translation such as that by Michael Grant, as it is thus possible to see how Mrs. Hamilton used actual phrases from her source. The italics in the passage from Agrippina which follows are mine.

39. Jane Porter's Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) was regarded as historical, but it dealt with events which had happened in the very recent past. She and her sister were to provide carefully researched historical novels, but Agrippina, if it be regarded as a novel, pre-dates them.

40. A. K. Elwood, op. cit., II, 119.

41. The result of a period spent looking after the children of a widowed nobleman whose name neither she nor her biographer gave. It went into a second edition in the same year, and was reprinted in 1814.

42. CR s. 3,15 (December 1808), 421 and 427; SM 70 (September 1808), 678-679.

43. Elizabeth Inchbald in her Nature and Art (1796) and Mrs. Opie in her Simple Tales (1806) had already portrayed humble life and the feelings of the poor—and no doubt others had also done so. However, pictures of common folk were still not common.

44. William Roberts, Memoirs of Hannah More, II, 425.

45. W. Roberts, op. cit., II, 426. Hannah More was not the first to produce tracts for the common people, but most earlier ones had not been meant to entertain. According to Maurice Quinlan, Victorian Prelude, pp. 84-85, Mrs. Trimmer tried to be entertaining with her Family Magazine (1788-89) but did not exploit the idea as did Mrs. More. Quinlan says of her tracts “with the exception of the Bible, probably no publication of any sort had ever been so widely read” (op. cit., p. 83).

46. W. Roberts, op. cit., II, 457. She decided, therefore, in 1796, to print in future two editions of the same tract, “one of a handsome appearance for the rich, the other on coarser paper.” She also seems to have begun to slant some of her tracts towards the more well-to-do, for when some of them were published in book form in 1818 they were printed under the titles of Tales for the Common People and Stories for Persons of the Middle Classes.

47. The last criterion was the essential difference as Elizabeth Missing Sewell saw it (see Vineta Colby, Yesterday's Woman, p. 176). Many of Mrs. Opie's tales have a relationship between a man and a woman as a central part of the plot, but most often the important element is a moral issue of character or principle. Only very rarely in her collections of tales is any one tale more than a volume in length. See chapter two, note 27, for a comment by Mrs. Opie on the tale as a form.

48. That this tour has nothing to do with the plot is indicative of the digressive nature of the novel. Interestingly, while describing Scotland he is made to comment, in a way rare at the time, on the effects of the Industrial Revolution—something Ivanka Kovačevíc, Fact into Fiction, p. 83, found only in Godwin and Peacock in fiction of the period (in Fleetwood and Headlong Hall, ch. 7). Mrs. Hamilton's concern was, in fact, usually with manners and morals rather than social justice.

49. EdR 12 (July 1808), 401.

50. Vineta Colby, who notes that Christopher Wordsworth found Mrs. More's tracts too “novelish and exciting,” also believes that the tract was influential in shaping the English novel. See Yesterday's Woman, pp. 155-158.

51. Margaret Maison, Search Your Soul, Eustace, p. 89.

52. In fact the original edition was too expensive for the working classes, and hope was expressed in EdR 12 (July 1808), 410, that a cheaper edition would soon be available for them—as it was.

53. There is an ambivalence on this subject in much of the fiction of the period; men are to be judged by worth not rank—but class distinctions are firmly retained.

54. However ludicrous this may seem, apparently Mrs. Hamilton had seen such a change actually made by Lord Woodhouselee on his estate just outside of Edinburgh. See David Craig, Scottish Literature and the Scottish People, pp. 214 and 296. Morison is spelled Morrison in later editions.

55. T. Gray, “Elegy Written in a Village Churchyard.” The punctuation is Mrs. Hamilton's.

56. CR s. 3, 15 (December 1808), 430.

57. AnR 7 (1808), 609; EdR 12 (July 1808), 410; SM 70 (September 1808), 682.

58. John H. Millar, A Literary History of Scotland, p. 541.

59. Her picture of squalor may seem exaggerated, as it did to Allan Cunningham, Athenaeum, November 16, 1833, 774. However Mary Brunton's pictures of Scottish peasants in Discipline seem to confirm the accuracy of Mrs. Hamilton's portrayal. There seems to have been a large number of printer's errors in the first edition which were corrected later—e.g., in the passage quoted, “that the cheese had been made” had to be corrected to “when the cheese had been made.”

60. Cf. V. Colby's comment on George Eliot in Yesterday's Woman, pp. 24-25: “Out of the domestic scene she constructs an entire social order.” In this tale Mrs. Hamilton, by chance rather than art, did this well before her.

61. SM 70 (September 1808), 679; EdR, July 12, 1808, 402.

62. The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, ed. Augustus J. K. Hare, I, 160. Miss Edgeworth had met Mrs. Hamilton in 1803. They corresponded, and Mrs. Hamilton visited the Edgeworths in 1813.

63. There are, in fact, as in all of Elizabeth Hamilton's works, constant reminders about how children should be brought up, and how their natural energy should be channelled in useful ways. It says much for the peasant scenes that they succeed, on the whole, in spite of this.

64. The chapter is called “The Doctrine of Liberty and Equality stripped of all seditious import.” The idea that the poor are in some ways better off than the rich is also found in Memoirs of Modern Philosophers, I, XVI, 209-213.

65. E. O. Benger, op. cit., I, 170. Glenburnie was reprinted by Garland Press in 1974.

66. Ibid., I, 168.

67. QR 11 (July 1814), 355 (review of Waverley) ranked her with Maria Edgeworth, while ER 8 (June 1812), 612 (on Mrs. Brunton's Self-Control), and NMM 13 (March 1820), 273, seem to have seen her as in some ways superior.

68. Miriam Allott, Novelists on the Novel, p. 207.

69. Allan Cunningham, “Biographical and Critical History of the Literature of last Fifty Years,” Athenaeum (November 16, 1833), 774.

70. David Masson, British Novelists and their Styles, p. 182.

71. Margaret Oliphant, The Literary History of England, III, 249.

72. Though, as has been noted, not the first.

Abbreviations Used in Notes

AnR	Annual Review
BC	British Critic
CR	Critical Review
EdR	Edinburgh Review
ER	Eclectic Review
MM	Monthly Magazine
NMM	New Monthly Magazine
QR	Quarterly Review
SM	Scots Magazine

Bibliography

The place of publication of the following works, unless otherwise stated, is London.

Editions

Unless otherwise indicated in a note, all quotations from novels are from first editions except as follows:

Jane Austen, Minor Works. R. W. Chapman, ed., 1969.

Mary Brunton, Self-Control. Third edition, 1811.

Amelia Opie, Simple Tales. Second edition, 1806.

Jane Porter, Thaddeus of Warsaw. Second edition, 1804.

1. Fiction by the Eight Novelists Discussed in this Study

Mary Brunton

Self-Control. Edinburgh: Manners and Miller; London: Longman, 1811.

Elizabeth Hamilton

Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1796.

Memoirs of Modern Philosophers. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1800.

Memoirs of the Life of Agrippina. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1804.

The Cottagers of Glenburnie. Edinburgh: Manners and Miller; London: Cadell and Davies, 1808.

Amelia Opie

Simple Tales. Longman, 1806.

2. Other Novels Referred to in the Essay

Austen, Jane. Minor Works. Edited by R. W. Chapman, 1969. (First published 1954.)

———. Mansfield Park. Egerton, 1814.

All references in the text to the novels are to the third Oxford University Press editions, R. W. Chapman, ed.

Barrett, Eaton Stannard. The Heroine. Elkin, Mathews and Marrot, 1927. (First published 1813).

Edgeworth, Maria. Castle Rackrent. Edited by George Watson. Oxford University Press, 1964. (First published 1800.)

———. Angelina; or l'Amie Inconnue. In Moral Tales for Young People. J. Johnson, 1801.

Godwin, William. Things as they are; or, the Adventures of Caleb Williams. Edited by D. McCracken. Oxford University Press, 1970. (First published 1794.)

Hays, Mary. Memoirs of Emma Courtney. New York: Garland Press, 1974. (First published 1796.)

Inchbald, Elizabeth. Nature and Art. Vol. 27 of The British Novelists, edited by L. Barbauld. F. C. and J. Rivington, 1810. (First published 1796.)

Lennox, Charlotte. The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella. Edited by M. Dalziel, Oxford University Press, 1970. (First published 1752.)

More, Hannah. Coelebs in Search of a Wife. Cadell, 1830. (First published 1808.)

Peacock, Thomas Love. Headlong Hall and Nightmare Abbey. In The Works of Thomas Love Peacock, edited by H. F. B. Brett Smith and C. E. Jones. New York: AMS Press, 1967, vols. I and III. (First published 1816 and 1818.)

Radcliffe, Ann. The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne: a Highland Story. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1970. (First published 1789.)

Scott, Sir Walter. Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since. Edinburgh: Constable, 1814.

Smollett, Tobias. Humphry Clinker. Edited by Lewis M. Knapp. Oxford University Press, 1966. (First published 1771.)

3. Primary Texts Other Than Novels

Austen, Jane. Jane Austen's Letters. Edited by R. W. Chapman, Oxford University Press, 1964. (First published 1932.)

Godwin, William. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness. Edited by I. Kramnick. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1978. (First published 1793.)

Gisborne, Thomas. An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex. Cadell and Davies, 1816. (First published 1797.)

Hamilton, Elizabeth. Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education. Robinson, Bath, 1801.

———. Letters addressed to the Daughter of a Nobleman on the formation of the religious and the moral principle. Cadell & Davies, 1806.

———. Exercises in Religious Knowledge. Cadell, 1809.

———. A Series of Popular Essays, Illustrative of Principles Essentially Connected with the Improvement of the Understanding, the Imagination, and the Heart. Longman, 1813.

———. Hints addressed to Patrons and Directors of Schools; to which are subjoined examples of questions calculated to excite and exercise the minds of the young. Longman, 1815.

Hamilton, William. The History of the Life and Adventures and Heroic Actions of the Renowned Sir William Wallace. Edinburgh: Ogle, 1721.

Moore, Hannah. The Works of Hannah More. Vols. 1-3. Fisher, Fisher and Jackson, 1833-36.

———. Practical Piety. Cadell and Davies, 1811. (Third edition; first published 1811.)

Peacock, Thomas L. “Essay on Fashionable Literature” (1818). In The Works of Thomas Love Peacock, edited by H. F. B. Brett Smith and C. E. Jones, vol. 8, 263-291. New York: AMS Press, 1967.

Porter, Jane. A Defence of the Profession of an Actor. W. Miller, 1800.

Richmond, Legh. The Dairyman's Daughter and Other Annals of the Poor. Religious Tract Society, 1908. (First published 1809-14.)

Scott, Sir Walter. The Letters of Sir Walter Scott. Edited by H. J. C. Grierson. Constable, 1932.

———. The Journal of Sir Walter Scott. Edited by W. E. K. Anderson. Oxford University Press, 1972.

———. Sir Walter Scott on Novelists and Fiction. Edited by Ioan Williams. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968.

Tacitus, Cornelius. The Works of Cornelius Tacitus. Trans. Arthur Murphy. G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1793.

4. Reference Works

Summers, Montague. A Gothic Bibliography. New York: Russell and Russell, 1964. (First published 1941.)

5. Nineteenth-Century Biographical and Critical Works

Benger, Elizabeth O. Memoirs of the late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton. Longman, 1818.

Cunningham, Allan. “Biographical and Critical History of the Literature of the last 50 Years: British Novels and Romances.” In Athenaeum, November 16, 1833, 773-777, and November 30, 1833, 809-812.

Elwood, Anne K. Memoirs of the Literary Ladies of England. Colburn, 1843.

Masson, David. British Novelists and their Styles. Macmillan, 1859.

Oliphant, Margaret. The Literary History of England in the End of the Eighteenth and the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Macmillan, 1882.

Roberts, William. Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More. Seeley and Burnside, 1834.

6. Twentieth-Century Biographical and Critical Works

Bradley, Ian. The Call to Seriousness. Jonathan Cape, 1976.

Brown, Ford K. Fathers of the Victorians. Cambridge University Press, 1961.

Colby, Vineta. Yesterday's Woman. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1974.

Craig, David. Scottish Literature and the Scottish People 1680-1830. Chatto and Windus, 1961.

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971. (First published 1957.)

Kovačević, Ivanka. Fact into Fiction: English Literature and the Industrial Scene 1750-1850. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1975.

Maison, Margaret. Search Your Soul, Eustace: A Survey of the Religious Novel in the Victorian Age. Sheed and Ward, 1961. (Also published under the title The Victorian Vision.)

Millar, John H. A Literary History of Scotland. T. Fisher Unwin, 1903.

Quinlan, Maurice J. Victorian Prelude. Cass, 1965.

7. Unsigned Articles and Reviews from Nineteenth-Century Periodicals

These are too numerous to list, but are cited where appropriate, with full details, as notes to the text.