[In the following excerpt, Edwards examines the literary, biographical, and historical contexts of The History of Emily Montague.]

[The History of Emily Montague] was typical of much eighteenth-century English literature. Its references to classical literature and mythology, and to the Chinese, Tartars, Turks, sultans, seraglios, and nabobs, and its quotations from the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, and more recent English and French writers placed it squarely in the context of the eighteenth-century literary tradition. Its title linked it to the eighteenth-century vogue for both history and biography, genres in which Mrs. Brooke herself also worked during the course of her career; its journey motifs, to much popular travel literature. Its pairing of such character opposites as the coquette and the woman of sensibility, the rake and the man of feeling, gave it a dramatic structure reminiscent of the comedy of manners that Mrs. Brooke with her love of the theatre had often seen on the London stage. Finally, the exploration of such themes as the advantages of country life over city living and the dangers of travel in France for young men connected it with a broad range of eighteenth-century writing.

The History of Emily Montague is linked more specifically with other works of contemporary eighteenth-century fiction. The novels of Samuel Richardson, whom Mrs. Brooke may have known and whose "divine writings"⁶⁵ she most certainly admired, and those of his followers, including Mme Riccoboni, were particularly influential. They provided a model for Mrs. Brooke's use of the epistolary form, a form she had already practised successfully in The History of Lady Julia Mandeville, the fifth edition of which James Dodsley published in 1769. They gave precedents for her contemporary setting with its references to fashionable English county towns like Bath, such haunts of the beau monde in London as Vauxhall and Hyde Park, and respectable London addresses like Pall Mall and Clarges Street. They set patterns for her writing about an ordinary, recognizable, albeit upper-middle-class and aristocratic world, peopled with army officers, gentlemen farmers, and successful merchants, especially those who had gained wealth in the East Indies and similarly exotic places. They showed her how to develop complicated fables about the reforming and reshaping of both male and female characters and their preparation for marriages based on love, friendship, and mutual respect. Women writers especially encouraged the exploration of themes relating to women's feelings, their education, and their freedom to choose whom they married. Finally, since Richardson and his followers used their novels for "the noble purpose of alluring the heart to virtue, and deterring it from vice,"⁶⁶ they promoted the seriousness of the genre and thus its appropriateness as a vehicle to teach both moral maxims and political wisdom.

In The History of Emily Montague, then, Frances Brooke reflected much that was typical in eighteenth-century life and literature. She also revealed, however, a talent for using fiction to describe and interpret with accuracy and acumen the new subject of contemporary life in the British province of Quebec. Although the epistolary novel seems today a very artificial type of fiction, actual letters—some of which are still extant—form a kind of subtext to Emily Montague. One group comprises the occasional topical letters written by both John and Frances Brooke to various people in authority in London. The letter that Mrs. Brooke wrote to the Bishop of London in January 1765 is probably the most pertinent of these as it illuminates the treatment of religion in the novel.

Some personal correspondence is likewise relevant. There is a particularly interesting group of letters exchanged by Frances Brooke, Jane Collier and Sarah Moore in 1763-64. On 15 Oct. 1763, a few days after her first arrival in Quebec, Frances Brooke wrote a note to Jane Collier to thank her for the drawings Dr. Brooke had requested. From then on, the three women regularly wrote letters to each other; of the 119 known to be extant, Frances penned 16, Jane 30, and Sarah 73. Because Frances and Sarah lived at Sillery, and Jane on Palace Street in the town of Quebec, their letters were delivered back and forth by servants and friends. The shortness of some of these notes, the speed and the frequency with which they were exchanged, and their conversational tone resemble the letters between the fictional Emily and Arabella, especially those that occur toward the middle of the novel when Emily admits her love for Colonel Rivers (Letters 74-79).⁶⁷ Certain aspects of their content, too, including arrangements about carrioles, preparations for assemblies and trips to such places as Beauport, analyses of character, exchanges of books—Shenstone is recorded as Sarah Moore's favourite author—discussions of sentiment, sensibility, and friendship, and debates about Sarah's feelings for George Allsopp, all suggest parallels between the facts of Mrs. Brooke's life in Quebec and her rendering of the town and its society in fiction.⁶⁸ Unfortunately, no personal letters sent by the Brookes between Quebec and England appear to have survived, but the novel's account of sending and receiving mail via Quebec and New York is authentic.

Mrs. Brooke is equally accurate in her presentation of geographical and topographical detail. The itinerary of her first trip to Quebec in 1763 by way of the Island of Cowes is reflected in Rivers' voyage to Canada in the novel; that of her sister's and Mrs. Collier's return from Quebec to Dover in 1765, in Emily's journey home. Although neither Frances nor John Brooke seems to have sailed between New York and England, this was a common alternate route; from Quebec the traveller would get to New York by way of the St. Lawrence and then the Richelieu River, Lake Champlain, and Lake George south to the Hudson River, a route used in the novel by both Sir George Clayton and "Monsieur le General" (Letter 16). References in the novel to places between Quebec and Montreal suggest that Mrs. Brooke was acquainted with the area, if not from personal visits then through those of others. On her journeys to and from England, Mrs. Brooke sailed by such places on the Lower St. Lawrence as Cape Rosier and Kamouraska, and the islands of Barnaby, Bic, and Coudre. In the novel she relates a story about Toussaint Cartier, the hermit of Barnaby Island, that may have been one of the many circulating about this mysterious figure when she was living in Quebec. Mrs. Brooke knew best Quebec and its immediate environs. From her home in Sillery she went frequently to the town of Quebec; and when she could, she visited the surrounding area. Her familiarity with this region is reflected in the novel: Sillery is "four miles" from the place in the town where "the general's assembly" is held (Letter 50); Montmorency "is almost nine miles distant, across the great bason of Quebec" (Letter 80).

Familiar with this area, she was excited and inspired by its scenery. In 1771, she explained to Richard Gifford: "There is no description [in The History of Emily Montague] above nature. The lovely luxuriance the wild magnificence of Canada, woud do honor to the finest genius on earth either in landscape poetry or painting: I never think of the scenes there without feeling my imagination inflamd.… All I have seen of England is mean to it, except the views from the terraces of Nottingham & Windsor. And for a river, the Thames & Trent are spoonfuls of water to the St. Lawrence."⁶⁹ The following anecdote about Frances Brooke and Samuel Johnson, recorded by Hester Thrale in her diary in December 1777, reveals another aspect of Mrs. Brooke's enthusiasm for the river: "When Mrs Brooke upon her Return to England from Quebec told Mr Johnson that the Prospect up the River Saint Lawrence was the finest in the World—but Madam says he, the Prospect down the River St. Lawrence is I have a Notion the finest you ever saw."⁷⁰ Accounts of the topography and topology of Quebec permeate the novel. Arabella's descriptions of Montmorency Falls are particularly enthusiastic, as Mrs. Brooke attempts to convey "the wild magnificence" of the scene through her "Montmorenci-mad" coquette (Letter 81).

Reflected in characters in The History of Emily Montague is a wide range of local people. The Indians at the nearby Huron village of Lorette, which Mrs. Brooke often visited, are carefully described. There are quotations from Roman Catholic priests, several of whom both Brookes knew, and stories about nuns at the convents of Quebec; although she is not named in the novel, specific references are made to Esther Wheelwright, the English nun who was Mrs. Brooke's particular friend at the Ursulines. In addition to Madame Des Roches, who plays a key role in the plot of the novel, Mrs. Brooke portrays several Canadian women as being at the same social events as Arabella and Emily. She provides a good deal of information about the Canadians and their language, religion, seigneurial system, and other cultural institutions.

Several of her chief characters have been identified with people whom Mrs. Brooke knew in Quebec. Arabella Fermor is said to be modelled on Anna Marie Bondfield, the daughter of the Brookes' landlord and later the wife of their friend George Allsopp; Edward Rivers, on Henry Caldwell, an army officer in Quebec in the 1760s; and William Fermor, on John Brooke himself, whose view he shared. These identifications should probably not be taken too literally, however. Arabella has also been identified with Mrs. Brooke's friend, Mary Woffington Cholmondeley, the wife of Robert Cholmondeley, and with Alexander Pope's Belinda in The Rape of the Lock (1712), who was modelled on a real Arabella Fermor, and she could equally be a composite of Sarah Moore, Jane Collier, and Mrs. Brooke herself. Similarly Edward Rivers could just as easily be based on George Allsopp or Mrs. Collier's merchant brothers. Still, that these identifications were and still are being made suggests the verisimilitude of these and the other protagonists in the novel.

The events used by Mrs. Brooke to shape her plot are likewise authentic. Some have to do with changes in weather and seasons typical of the Canadian climate. Arabella records, for example, that in the last week of November the port of Quebec closed for the winter and the first snow came; her father, that in late April "the vast body of ice" which covered the St. Lawrence broke up at Quebec and thus the river reopened for shipping (Letter 131). Many of the social gatherings in the novel are similar to those Mrs. Brooke and her sister attended. Some of these are seasonal, but others, such as the numerous Thursday assemblies held by "the general," are tied to the actual political developments that the novel traces.

Political events, in fact, help control the chronology of The History of Emily Montague. The first letter written from Quebec is dated within a day of James Murray's departure for London on 28 June 1766, and Rivers, referring to the governor's leaving, notes that there is a "kind of interregnum of government" (Letter 2). When he arrived in September 1766, Murray's successor, Guy Carleton, travelled to Quebec from Montreal; in the novel both Rivers and Clayton travel with "the general" as he progresses down the St. Lawrence. Carleton's presence in Quebec was greeted with relief by many people, including the Brookes and the merchants; Rivers says that "a new golden age" is expected from "a successor" (Letter 2). For a while at least, Carleton was generally more popular with the various warring factions than Murray had been, although the latter still had supporters; in a letter dated 23 Nov. 1766, Arabella remarks on the "squabbling at Quebec" over "some dregs of old disputes" (Letter 45), but on 10 July 1767, her father laments that he will "leave Canada at the very time when one would wish to come to it," and states, "It is astonishing, in a small community like this, how much depends on the personal character of him who governs" (Letter 159). Mrs. Brooke's flattering remarks about Carleton in the dedication of her novel are thus reinforced.

Both the private and public themes of the novel, which are linked through images such as those of the Edenic myth and gardens, end on relatively happy notes. Although Rivers expresses "fears for Lucy's happiness" (Letter 200), in the end he is reconciled to her marriage to Temple. Fitzgerald's marriage to Arabella and Rivers' to Emily are each described as a sensible and loving union between two friends and equal partners. The difficulties in this latter match that might have been caused by Emily's jealousy of Rivers' friendship for Madame Des Roches are removed when Emily and Edward return to England. The appearance of Emily's father alleviates the financial problems that have beset the chief characters throughout the novel, while the discovery of Sir William Verville allows even the Sophia subplot to end propitiously. The society created through these marriages, unexpected appearances, and reconciliations is a pleasing blend of the country and the city; agriculture and commerce; aristocrats, merchants, officers, and servants; and educated, enlightened, and independent ladies and gentlemen.

The public themes, especially those concerned with North America, are left more open. The religious, educational, legal, and commercial problems of all the colonies of British North America receive attention, and to those relating to Quebec resolutions are offered: William Fermor, for example, advocates the need for schools to teach the Canadians English and for churches and an Anglican establishment to convert the Roman Catholics to the Church of England, both subjects dear to the Brookes. The novel is silent on any action in connection with these difficulties, however, and the role of Madame Des Roches as a source of tension between Emily and Edward, her name ("rocks"), and even the gifts she sends to Rivers and his bride imply Mrs. Brooke's awareness of the dangers inherent in these Canadian problems and their resolution. Nevertheless, the novel's opening with the old governor's departure, and its later emphasis on the new general's benevolence, underline an optimism about the future. And even though the novel ends with the chief characters cultivating their paradisaical gardens in rural England, the natural images that dominate the descriptions of Quebec suggest that a similarly sacramental society could be created in the "wild magnificence" of the new world. Mrs. Brooke presents, therefore, an essentially positive view of the potential of the new British colony. And even as she dedicated The History of Emily Montague to Guy Carleton in March 1769, six months after her husband's return from Quebec, she still may have hoped that their dream of preferment and settlement there could be realized.

Notes

⁶⁵ Frances Brooke, The Excursion, A Novel. The Second Edition (London: T. Cadell, 1785), Vol. 1, p. viii.

⁶⁶Ibid.

⁶⁷ Throughout this introduction, the Arabic letter numbers are cited as they appear in the CEECT [Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts] edition.

⁶⁸ Northamptonshire Record Office, "Correspondence between Dr. & Mrs Brooke, Miss Moore and Mrs Collier while living at Quebec," TS YZ4008, passim. I am preparing an edition of these letters and their two companion pieces, the journal of 1763 and that of 1765.

⁶⁹ Harvard, Houghton Library, fMS Eng 1310 (9), ALS, [Autograph Letter Signed], Frances Brooke to Richard Gifford, 21 May [1771].

⁷⁰Thraliana. The Diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale (Later Mrs Piozzi) 1776-1809, ed. Katherine C. Balderston, Vol. 1 1776-1784, Second Edition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1951), p. 196. This anecdote is similar to that recorded about Johnson's view of Scotland by James Boswell in his diary of 6 July 1763: "'Sir,' said Johnson, 'I believe you have a great many noble wild prospects.… But, Sir, I believe the noblest prospect that a Scotsman ever sees is the road which leads him to England!"' See Boswell's London Journal 1762-1763, ed. Frederick A. Pottle (New York, London, Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1950), p. 294.…