Abstract
This chapter refines the literary history of how the “scandalous memoirs” crystallized in England in the mid-eighteenth century. Scholars have previously noted the innovations of Teresia Constantia Phillips’s Apology (1748–1749) and Laetitia Pilkington’s Memoirs (1748–1754). I highlight the contributions of two friends whose life writings preceded, intersected with, and departed from these memoirs. One was Madame de La Touche, whose short Apologie (1736) circulated in manuscript before its publication in English as the Appeal (1741); the other was Frances, Lady Vane, who shared an account of her husband’s abuse before publishing her memoirs in Tobias Smollett’s novel The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751). Together, their memoirs provided an alternative model for later memoirists in their shared themes, strategies, and objectives.
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Notes
- 1.
Lady Vane describes this trip during the summer of 1736 in Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. In which are included, Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, 1751, ed. John P. Zomchick et al. (U of Georgia P, 2014), 391–393. Further references are included parenthetically in the text.
- 2.
Françoise-Thérèse-Guillaume de Fontaine La Touche, The Appeal of Madame La T—To the Public. Being a Short Account of her Life and Amours. Written by Herself (London: T. Cooper, 1741), CT1018. L3225 A3 1741, Special Collections, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA; and The Appeal of Madame La T—To the Public. Being a Short Account of her Life and Amours. Written by Herself (London: T. Paris, at the Royal-Exchange, 1741), Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, hereafter designated as ECCO. In these two editions, the text and typography are identical.
- 3.
Lynda M. Thompson, The ‘Scandalous Memoirists’: Constantia Phillips, Laetitia Pilkington and the Shame of ‘Publick Fame’ (Manchester UP, 2000), ix.
- 4.
The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, ed. The Right Honourable Lady Llanover, 3 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1861), 2:51, Google Books.
- 5.
I have located three copies by Françoise-Thérèse-Guillaume de Fontaine La Touche: (1) Apologie de Madame La Touche (The Hague, November 30, 1736), Goodwood MS 39, used with the permission of the West Sussex Record Office; (2) Apologie de Madame La Touche (The Hague, November 30, 1736), Reel 8 of the Portland Papers Collection, PO/VOL. XVIII (1632–1763), used with the permission of Microform Academic Publishers. A third is now at Harvard University: Apologie de Madame de la Touche par elle meme (December 1736). In the rest of this chapter, I rely on the copy in the Goodwood collection, which is the most legible.
- 6.
Lynda M. Thompson identifies similarities between the French and English traditions, but positions the English “scandalous memoirs” as “slightly earlier” (137).
- 7.
Gillian Dow, “A Model for the British Fair? French Women’s Life Writing in Britain, 1680–1830,” Women’s Life Writing, 1700–1850: Gender, Genre and Authorship, ed. Daniel Cook and Amy Culley (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 86–102.
- 8.
Lionel Kelly, for instance, argues that Pilkington “provided a ‘model’ for Lady Vane in her Memoirs inserted in Peregrine Pickle.” See Kelly’s Editorial Introduction to “38. Mrs. Laetitia Pilkington on Roderick Random 1754,” Tobias Smollett: The Critical Heritage, ed. Lionel Kelly (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), 102.
- 9.
See, for instance, Felicity A. Nussbaum, The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century England (Johns Hopkins UP, 1989), especially 182–185; Thompson, especially 170–175; and Victoria Joule, “‘Heroines of their own romance’: Creative Exchanges between Life-Writing and Fiction, the ‘Scandalous Memoirists’ and Charlotte Lennox,” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 37.1 (2014), especially 40–41.
- 10.
Susan Staves, A Literary History of Women’s Writing in Britain, 1660–1789 (Cambridge UP, 2006), 273.
- 11.
Emma Plaskitt, “Vane, Frances Anne, Viscountess Vane (bap. 1715, d. 1788),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford UP, 2004), www.oxforddnb.com.
- 12.
Samuel Richardson, letter to Sarah Chapone, December 6, 1750, in Tobias Smollett: The Critical Heritage, ed. Lionel Kelly (Kelly 1987), 47; John Duncombe, The Feminiad. A Poem, 1754, Augustan Reprint Soc. No. 207 (William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1981), 15; and Richard Graves, “The Heroines: or, Modern Memoirs,” The London Magazine. Or, Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer (March 20, 1751): 136. This poem was also published in London in The Universal Magazine (March 8, 1751): 127, Google Books.
- 13.
See Mary Wortley Montagu’s letter to her daughter February 16, 1752 in The Complete Letters, ed. Robert Halsband, 3 vols. (Clarendon P, 1965–1967) 3.6.
- 14.
A Letter to the Right Honourable the Lady V-ss V—.…(London: W. Owen, 1751), 4–5, ECCO.
- 15.
A Letter, 11.
- 16.
[John Hill], A Parallel between the Characters of Lady Frail, and the Lady of Quality in Peregrine Pickle…(London: R. Griffiths, 1751), 70. Digital Scan Provided by Houghton Library, Harvard University.
- 17.
Pierre de La Fontaine, The Adventures of Capt. De la Fontaine…(Pope’s-Head-Alley, Cornhill: F. Stamper and E. Downham, 1751), 37, ECCO.
- 18.
Horace Walpole, Letter March 13, 1751, rpt. In Tobias Smollett: The Critical Heritage, ed. Lionel Kelly (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), 76.
- 19.
Henrietta Knight, Baroness Luxborough, Letter, May 27, 1751, in Letters Written by the Late Right Honourable Lady Luxborough, to William Shenstone, Esq. (London: Dodsley, 1775), 266, ECCO.
- 20.
G. S. Rousseau, 376.
- 21.
La Touche, Apologie, Goodwood MS, 2. My transcription of this manuscript captures its spelling and punctuation, which of course varies according to copy. The published Appeal says, “As my Family is pretty well known, I shall say but little on that Head.” See The Appeal of Madame La T—to the Public. Being a Short Account of her Life and Amours. Written by Herself (London: T. Paris, at the Royal-Exchange, 1741), 5, ECCO; and The Appeal of Madame La T—to the Public. Being a Short Account of her Life and Amours. Written by Herself (London: T. Cooper, 1741), 5, copy courtesy of UVA Special Collections. The editions are identical except for the imprint. The publication history of these two texts is unknown.
- 22.
Guy Rowlands, Dangerous and Dishonest Men: The International Bankers of Louis XIV’s France (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 159.
- 23.
Rowlands, 164.
- 24.
Rowlands, 167.
- 25.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions and Correspondence, vol. 5 of The Collected Writings of Rousseau, trans. Christopher Kelly and edited by Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters, and Peter G. Stillman (UP of New England, 1990), 244. Her Christian name is confirmed by numerous sources (see, for instance, Monod-Cassidy 42 and Bonhomme 378). It is, however, cited in many English sources as Marie-Therese, which is the name she took upon her formal renunciation of the Catholic Church in 1739. When she converted to the Church of England, in 1741, she formally Anglicized her name to Mary Theresa, which is also given in a document related to her denization by George II.
- 26.
P. G. M. Dickson details the corruption in The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit 1688–1756 (St. Martin’s Press, 1967).
- 27.
Newspapers reported George I’s dismissal of the directors. See Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal, January 21, 1721, in Burney Newspapers; also noted in Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer on January 21, 1721.
- 28.
John Carswell, The South Sea Bubble (Stanford UP, 1960), 242, 258–259.
- 29.
Carswell, 248.
- 30.
Francis Hawes, The Case of Francis Hawes, One of the Late Directors of the South-Sea Company (London, 1721), 1, ECCO.
- 31.
Carswell, 242.
- 32.
Rita Denman’s account of a talk given by Ben Viljoen on Buildings and Estates of Purley on Thames, http://www.project-purley.eu/M0015.pdf.
- 33.
“News,” Daily Courant [London, England], January 1, 1731, n.p., Burney Collection. Similar reports—with variations on the fiancé’s name of Oglbye and Ogilvie—subsequently appeared in “News,” Read’s Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, January 2, 1731, Burney Newspapers; and Caledonian Mercury, January 5, 1731, section “London, Dec. 31.” The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk).
- 34.
Stamford Mercury, May 10, 1733, page 2, The British Newspaper Archive.
- 35.
John Hill, The History of a Woman of Quality, or, the Adventures of Lady Frail (London: M. Cooper and G. Woodfall, 1751), 2–3, 29, ECCO.
- 36.
Derby Mercury, June 11, 1733, The British Newspaper Archive. Lady Vane did not go to Holland at this time.
- 37.
Yeoman of Kent, The Landed Interest Consider’d: Being Serious Advice to Gentlemen, Yeomen, Farmers, and Others, Concerned in the Ensuing Election (London: J. Roberts, 1733), 35, ECCO.
- 38.
Margrit Schulte Beerbühl, The Forgotten Majority: German Merchants in London, Naturalization, and Global Trade 1660–1815, trans. Cynthia Klohr (Berghahn, 2015), 145; Charles Wilson, Anglo-Dutch Commerce & Finance in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge UP, 1941; rpt. 1966), 97, 102.
- 39.
A. F. Twist, “Widening circles in finance, philanthropy and the arts. A study of the life of John Julius Angerstein 1735–1823,” PhD Thesis, Instituut voor Cultuur en Geschiedenis (ICG), 2002, 7, http://hdl.handle.net/11245/1.209016. Muilman’s role as a broker is recorded by Dickson, 286, 290, 318.
- 40.
“News,” Daily Post (London), Wednesday, October 4, 1721, Burney Newspapers.
- 41.
“News,” Daily Journal (London), Friday, September 27, 1728, Burney Newspapers. See other versions of the same announcement in “News,” Daily Post (London), Thursday, September 26, 1728, Burney Newspapers.
- 42.
Twist 7.
- 43.
James Roberts the younger, Dagnam-Park near South Weald in Essex, the Seat of Henry Muilman Esq. (London: Robert Wilkinson), n.d. Current location: British Embassy, Washington DC, USA.
- 44.
W. A. Speck discusses the stereotype in “Eighteenth-Century Attitudes Towards Business,” The Representation of Business in English Literature, ed. Arthur Pollard (Liberty Fund, 2009), 19.
- 45.
La Touche, Apologie 2–3. The wedding took place on May 12, 1729, according to Gustave Desnoiresterres, Épicuriens et Lettrés XVIIe et XVIIIe Siècles (Paris: Charpentier, 1879), 379, Google Books.
- 46.
Barnardiston 1742, p. 135.
- 47.
See, for instance, A Letter to the Right Honourable the Lady V—s V— (1751), 20.
- 48.
Honoré Bonhomme’s “Madame de La Touche,” Revue Britannique (June 1873), 379, Google Books.
- 49.
The Vanes’ journey was noted in the “London” section of the London Evening Post (June 8–10, 1736), Burney Newspapers.
- 50.
The editors of the Georgia edition—John P. Zomchick and George S. Rousseau—call attention to this difference in a note (94, on page 750) and include the text of the second and third edition in their historical collation (887).
- 51.
Patrick Guthrie, letter to James Gibb on August 10, 1736, in The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Portland, by Great Britain, Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, vol. VI (London: His Majesty’s Registry Office, 1901), 63.
- 52.
Thomas Barnardiston, Reports of the Cases Determined in the High Court of Chancery, from April 25, 1740 to May 9, 1741 (Henry Lintot, 1742), 135, ECCO.
- 53.
“News,” London Evening Post (25–27 November 1736) and Bagnall’s News (November 27, 1736), p. 2 in Burney Newspapers.
- 54.
John, Lord Hervey, Letter to Henry Fox on November 25, 1736, Lord Hervey and His Friends, 1726–1738, ed. Earl of Ilchester (London: John Murray, 1950), 256. Note that England was still following the Gregorian calendar.
- 55.
News, Wye’s Letter, December 27, 1736.
- 56.
Jacques Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History, trans. Sarah Lucille Bonnefoi, ed. L. Pearce Williams (Cornell UP, 1997), 31; Hervey, letter to Stephen Fox on 4 December 1736, in Lord Hervey and His Friends, 258.
- 57.
Bagnall’s News (London) November 27, 1736, p. 2. This article also appears in the London Evening Post (November 25–27 1736), Burney Newspapers.
- 58.
See, for instance, Marie, Lady Bolingbroke’s Letter to Isabella, Countess of Denbigh, December 11, 1736, in Historical Manuscripts Commission: Report of the Manuscripts of the Earl of Denbigh. Preserved at Newnham Paddox. Warwickshire, Part V (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1911), 120–121.
- 59.
Apologie (Goodwood), 1, 15; see also the Appeal, 1, 28.
- 60.
Daily Gazetteer (London) and Daily Journal (London) published ads on January 24, 1737, Burney Newspapers.
- 61.
The Earl of Egmont made this note in his diary entry for January 27, 1737. James L. Clifford quotes it in his endnote for page 467 in his edition of Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (Oxford UP, 1983), 796.
- 62.
See Caledonian Mercury, January 5, 1731, section “London, Dec. 31.”; and “From Wye’s Letter, January 27,” in the Derby Mercury on February 3, 1736, p. 2; both in The British Newspaper Archive.
- 63.
See, for instance, “Advertisements,” The Grub Street Journal (London), January 27, 1737; “Classified Ads,” Old Whig or The Consistent Protestant (London), February 3, 1737; both in Burney Newspapers.
- 64.
James L. Clifford, endnote for page 467, in The Adventures, 796.
- 65.
See, for instance, Allen, Lord Bathurst’s letter to Jonathan Swift on December 6, 1737, in The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D, ed. F. Elrington Ball, vol. VI (G. Bell and Sons, 1914), 54.
- 66.
“Letter from Paris, Jan. 24,” Daily Post, London (January 20, 1738); “News,” London Evening Post (January 21–24, 1738); and “News,” Daily Gazetteer (London Edition) (January 24, 1738), all in the Burney Newspapers.
- 67.
“News,” London Evening Post (January 23–25, 1739), n.p. in Burney Newspapers.
- 68.
“Register of Books in March, 1741,” The Gentleman’s Magazine XI (March 1741): 167, Google Books; and “New Books,” The Scots Magazine (March 6, 1741): 144, The British Newspaper Archive.
- 69.
“Promotions List,” The Gentleman’s Magazine (March 1741): 164.
- 70.
Roger 50; Jane Coke, Letters from Lady Jane Coke to her Friend Mrs. Eyre at Derby 1747–1758, ed. Mrs. Ambrose Rathbone (London: Swan Sonnenschien, 1899), Letter XII, 21 August 1750; and Letter XVII, www.archive.org; Bonhomme 387.
- 71.
Grub Street Journal (September 15, 1737), Burney Newspapers.
- 72.
“News,” London Evening Post (December 28–30, 1738) and The London Daily Post and General Advertiser (December 29, 1738), both in the Burney Newspapers; Stamford Mercury (January 24, 1740), The British Newspaper Archive; Newcastle Courant (November 8, 1740), The British Newspaper Archive.
- 73.
Horace Walpole, Correspondence, vol. 17 (New Haven: Yale), 459, images.library.yale.edu.
- 74.
O M Brack, Jr., “Smollett and the Authorship of ‘The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality.’” Tobias Smollett, Scotland’s First Novelist: New Essays in Memory of Paul-Gabriel Boucé, ed. O. M. Brack, Jr. (U of Delaware P, 2007), 46.
- 75.
Brack, 46.
- 76.
Zomchick and Rousseau, note 206, in the Georgia Edition of Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle, 761.
- 77.
Rosalind K. Marshall, “Dalrymple, Eleanor, countess of Stair (d. 1759),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford UP, 2004), www.oxforddnb.com.
- 78.
Zomchick and Rousseau, notes 216 and 217 to Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle, 762.
- 79.
Lady Vane, Letter to Mr. Craggs (no date), in Frances Anne Vane, Viscountess Vane, Papers, the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University. Many thanks for permission to quote from this letter.
- 80.
Hill, Lady Frail 211.
- 81.
Vane, Letter 1.
- 82.
Vane, Letter 2.
- 83.
Vane, Letter 3.
- 84.
Brack, “Authorship” 36.
- 85.
Neil Guthrie, for instance, proposes John Cleland as a candidate for Lady Vane’s ghostwriter, finding parallels between Lady Vane’s memoirs and Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. See “New Light on Lady Vane,” Notes and Queries n.s. 49 (2002), 377.
- 86.
Included in the Burney Newspapers.
- 87.
This notice appeared in the Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer (August 1749); the General Advertiser (21 August 1749); and the London Penny Post (August 21-–23, 1749).
- 88.
A Letter to the Right Honourable, 12.
- 89.
A. C. Elias, Introduction, Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, ed. A. C. Elias (U of Georgia P, 1997), 1: xvii, xviii.
- 90.
Apologie (Goodwood), 1. The Appeal translates this passage, “It is with no small Concern that I have heard that withdrawing myself has laid me under the Censure of the Publick; this has compell’d me to acquaint them with the Motives for my Retreat, that I may efface those Calumnies to which my Conduct has given rise” (3–4).
- 91.
La Touche, Apologie (Goodwood), 3. In the Appeal (1741), La Touche describes herself as an “Instrument” and says, “I was made the Victim of Mr. Le T—’s Fortune” (7).
- 92.
La Touche, Apologie (Goodwood), 6; Appeal, 13.
- 93.
See 27 English Rep. 585.
- 94.
Teresia Constantia Phillips, An Apology for the Conduct of Mrs. Teresia Constantia Phllips, More Particularly That Part of it which relates to her Marriage with an eminent Dutch Merchant (London, 1748–1749), 1: 314–315, ECCO.
- 95.
La Touche, Apologie (Goodwood), 12. The English Appeal drops the last phrase, translating the sentence as “I plead the Power of Love and the Weakness of my Sex!” (23).
- 96.
Zomchick and Rousseau identify this as “A line from Nicholas Rowe’s (1674–1718) popular domestic tragedy, The Fair Penitent (1703), uttered by the heroine Calista in act 5” (note 2, page 740).
- 97.
La Touche, Apologie (Goodwood), 5.
- 98.
La Touche, Apologie (Goodwood), 12; Appeal 22.
- 99.
La Touche, Apologie (Goodwood), 12; Appeal 23.
- 100.
La Touche, Apologie (Goodwood), 11; Appeal 22.
- 101.
La Touche, Apologie (Goodwood), 14; Appeal 26.
- 102.
La Touche, Apologie (Goodwood), 11. Compare the Appeal: “I acknowledge I have quitted Mr. Le T—, but not my Husband: For I defy him to say he ever exacted of me certain Duties to which the Matrimonial Laws subject our Sex” (21).
- 103.
Apologie (Goodwood), 8. The Appeal translates this passage: “Being thoroughly vers’d in the Customs of Italy, he seldom spoke to me without the mention of a Poniard or Pistol; and being in constant Uneasiness and Suspicion, the least Noise fetch’d him out of his Apartment, arm’d cap-à-pie; but so great was his Cowardice, that the first Object he saw alarm’d his Fears, and threw him into a Tremor” (15–16).
- 104.
Apologie (Goodwood), 14; Appeal 27.
- 105.
As indicated by the textual editors of the Georgia edition of Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle (O M Brack, Jr. and W. H. Keithley), this prefatory material is included in volume 3 of the 2nd edition. It is reproduced as part of the Historical Collation, 880–882.
- 106.
For details about Pilkington’s financial distress, see Norma Clarke’s excellent biography Queen of the Wits: A Life of Laetitia Pilkington (Faber and Faber, 2008).
- 107.
Thompson, 20.
- 108.
Apologie (Goodwood), 15. The Appeal modifies the proverb: “The shortest Follies are the least dangerous” (28).
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Breashears, C. (2016). The Business of Pleasure: The Life Writings of Lady Vane and Madame de La Touche. In: Eighteenth-Century Women's Writing and the 'Scandalous Memoir'. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48655-0_2
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