Abstract
In the second volume of Pamela, Richardson chooses to add to his heroine’s woes by inflicting her new baby son with smallpox. As she informs her sister-in-law, Lady Davers: A new misfortune, my dear lady!—But this is of God Almighty’s sending; so I must bear it patiently. My dear baby is taken with the small-pox!—To how many troubles are the happiest of us subjected in this life!… For, with all my pleasures and hopes; in the midst of my dear parents’ joy and congratulations on our arrival, and on what had passed so happily since we were last here together, (in the birth of the dear child, and my safety, for which they had been so apprehensive,) the poor baby was taken ill. It was on that very Tuesday his papa set out for Tunbridge; but we knew not it would be the small-pox till Thursday. O Madam! how are all the pleasures I had formed to myself sickened now upon me! for my Billy is very bad.
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Notes
- 1.
(1962) Pamela, Volume II, M. Kinkead-Weekes (ed.) (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd), II, p. 333.
- 2.
(2007) Smallpox and the Literary Imagination 1660–1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 170.
- 3.
(1988) Smallpox and its Eradication (Geneva: The World Health Organization), p. 230.
- 4.
(1733) Letters Concerning the English Nation by M. de Voltaire (London: C. Davis and A. Lyon), p. 80. Voltaire’s figures, of course, do not add up.
- 5.
(1996) ‘Decorums’, in L. E. Merians (ed.), The Secret Malady: Venereal Disease in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky), pp. 149–50.
- 6.
(1737) A Treatise of Venereal Diseases, In Six Books, W. Barrowby (trans.) (London: W. Innys and R. Manby), p. 1.
- 7.
(1796) Observations Concerning the Prevention and Cure of the Venereal Disease (London: T. Chapman), pp. 187–88.
- 8.
(2008) ‘Review: Smallpox and the Literary Imagination 1660–1820’, Medical History (October 2008), 52:4, 565–66, p. 565.
- 9.
See D. R. Hopkins (1983) The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002 edn), pp. 37–41.
- 10.
(1975) The Third Advice to a Painter, ll. 245–48, in Anthology of Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse 1660–1714, G. de F. Lord (ed.) (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 53.
- 11.
(1975) An Historical Poem, in Lord, p. 238–39.
- 12.
(1990) ‘On the Death of the Duke of Gloucester’, in P. Thomas (ed.), The Collected Works of Katherine Philips, 2 vols. (Stump Cross: Stump Cross Press), I, 76, cited in Shuttleton, p. 71.
- 13.
(1660) An Elegie On the Death of the Most Illustrious Prince, Henry Duke of Gloucester (Oxford: Henry Hall), pp. 4–5. See also Shuttleton, pp. 71–2.
- 14.
(1722) A Sermon Against the Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation. Preach’d at St. Andrew’s Holborn, On Sunday, July 8th, 1722 (London: William Meadows), pp. 29–30. See also I. and J. Glen (2004) The Life and Death of Smallpox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 64.
- 15.
(1709) ‘An Ode. Presented to the King, on His Majesty’s Arrival in Holland, After the Queen’s Death. 1695’, in Poems on Several Occasions (London: Jacob Tonson), pp. 55–56.
- 16.
On this, see R. A. Anselment (1995) The Realms of Apollo: Literature and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Associated University Presses), especially ch. 5. Dryden uses both rose buds and tears in his 1649 poem, ‘Upon the Death of Lord Hastings’. Both Jeremy Terrent and William Cartwright use stars writing about Charles I’s recovery from smallpox in 1633, the former in ‘Thankes for this great deliverance, say you’ and the latter in ‘On His Majesties recovery from the small Pox. 1633’.
- 17.
(1751) A Dissuasive Against Inoculating for the Small-Pox (London: Jacob Robinson), p. 52.
- 18.
(1722) A Letter to Dr. Freind; Shewing The Danger and Uncertainty of Inoculating the Small Pox (London: Samuel Butler), pp. 5–6.
- 19.
(1722) Mr. Maitland’s Account of Inoculating the Small Pox Vindicated, from Dr. Wagstaffe’s Misrepresentations of that Practice, with Some Remarks on Mr. Massey’s Sermon (London: J. Peele), Title page.
- 20.
(1708) A Treatise of all the Degrees and Symptoms of the Venereal Disease, in Both Sexes (London: S. Crouch et al., 6th edn), pp. 27–28.
- 21.
(1747) An Essay on the Smallpox (Dublin: J. Kinneir and A.Long), pp. 39–40.
- 22.
(1780?) A Treatise on the Natural Small Pox (London: J. Dixwell), p. 87 ff.
- 23.
(1737) An Account of An improved Method of Treating the Small-Pocks (Nottingham: G. Ayscough and Mr. Ward), p. 11.
- 24.
(1784) An Inquiry How to Prevent The Small-Pox (London: J. Monk), pp. 118–19.
- 25.
(1702) A Dissertation of the Small Pox (London: J. Nutt), p. 47.
- 26.
(1730) A Practical Essay Concerning the Small Pox (Boston: D. Henchman and T. Hancock), p. 32.
- 27.
(1745) A Practical Treatise on the Small-Pox and Measles (Worcester: S. Bryan), p. 9.
- 28.
(1748) A Discourse on the Small Pox and Measles (London: John Brindley), p. 180.
- 29.
(1764) The Elements of Surgery (London: Robert Horsfield, 2nd edn, revised by Alexander Reid), p. 82.
- 30.
(1989) ‘Saturday: The Small-Pox’ from Six Town Eclogues, ll. 5–8, in R. Lonsdale (ed.), Eighteenth-Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 56.
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Ingram, A. (2016). How Small is Small? Small Pox, Large Presence. In: Ingram, A., Wetherall Dickson, L. (eds) Disease and Death in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59718-2_8
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