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Sir Charles Grandison rescues Miss Byron
Sir Charles Grandison and his daughters
Sir Charles Grandison reconciles Sir Harry and Lady Beauchamp
Publisher's note
IN the days when wood engraving as now practised, and when lithography, zincography, photography, and the thousand and one mechamcal processes for cheap and direct reproduction of the artist' s drawing were practically unknown, illustrations were perforce almost entirely confined to direct impressions from engraved copperplates. The minor as well as the more important works of the best engravers of that elastic period find a safe refuge in the folio of the art collector. But only a few of the original copperplates have escaped the melting pot, and impressions from some of the more finely engraved of these are here presented. Each one has been carefully and separately struck off direct from the original copperplate itself — the only method of pnnting by which the minuteness and beauty of the engraved work can be properly rendered.
Richardson was born in Derbyshire, in 1689. The son of a printer, he was apprenticed at the age of fifteen to a printer in London. It was characteristic of his deliberateness that he took half a century to discover he was a fine author. For he was fifty when he wrote Pamela, which, with a speed unknown to its creator, made haste into five editions. Eight years later, Clarissa Harlowe appeared; and four years after that, The History of Sir Charles Grandison, in which Richardson designed to draw the character of a Christian gentleman. It was a venturesome undertaking on the part of the old bookseller, writing in a back-shop, and in an age of license and of false honour. Yet how well he succeeded is seen by the great contemporary fame he (very keenly) enjoyed, and by the fact that his graceful pages retain for fastidious readers today the fascinations they first exercised over fine ladies in the Ranelagh Gardens, who triumphantly waved Richardson's volumes — fresh from the press — before the eyes of envious beholders who possessed them not. This maker and printer of books — an ideal combination — had lived for seventytwo years, when he died in 1761. His declining days were soothed by the friendship of many ladies, who repaid with tenderness the true homage Richardson had offered in his pages to their sex. Nor was this all he gained from his worship of womanhood. For it was his gallantry, of a good kind, which did more than anything else to educate and to develop him — freeing him from ignorances and limitations common to his time. May the same dear devotion have always similar and sweet rewards!
JOHN OLDCASTLE
It is a pity that it should not be taken at all. The book is full of charm. We even venture to say that no one reading it with dramatic reference to time and manners would seriously wish to shorten its polysyllables, or moderate its gush, its tears, its sprightliness, its perfectly high-bred and graceful twaddle, or would diminish the number of Sir Charles's virtues, accomplishments, or adorers. The "best of men" is really a very fine, generous, and delicate gentleman. The old bookseller who drew him set his heart upon making a virtuous contemporary Christian, who should not be a milksop; and the little absurdities of the book ought not to impair the importance of the fact that he succeeded.
The whole being in the form of letters — such letters! "the loveliest of her sex" must have given all her days and all her nights, and they would not have sufficed, to her correspondence — Richardson has presented his hero dramatically, through the narratives of the other characters, whose virtues he encourages, whose vices he reforms, whose faults he forgives, whose good looks he outshines, whose dancing, fencing, wooing, and praying he outdoes. Thus the whole book has the effect of a chorus of admiration. Miss Byron narrowly escapes a decline through her suspense as to the state of his affections, while the excellent Clementina, in Bologna, goes mad for love of him, and the reprehensible Olivia, at Florence, makes attempts upon his life and liberty in the vindictiveness of her love, and the ingenuous Miss Jervois spends her time in tears. Miss Byron, the chosen one and thus "the happiest woman in England", must be shown worthy of such a man, and so we have infinite correspondence on her beauties of mind and person.
The minor characters, at which Richardson did not labour with so careful a hand, are really admirable. Lady G's letters are charming, even now, although the fashions in fun change so much; Sir Charles's "awful dad" (we really beg pardon for using slang on a subject which the best of men treats with such filial respect and such circumspection is cleverly sketched; and the Italian group (excepting perhaps the ill-behaved Olivia) are very good for the untravelled time at which Sir Charles Grandison was written.
The story consists simply in the deliberations and difficulties of Sir Charles's choice in marriage. Before he had seen the amiable Byron he had felt a pure flame for the admirable Clementina, who has conscientious objections to marrying a Protestant, Sir Charles had promised this lady her own confessor, her chapel, and the education of daughters, but Clementina fears that his virtues and his goodness might some day wean her insensibly from her faith, and she struggles against her feelings at the (temporary) expense of her reason. Grandison incidentally reforms her brother Jeronymo, who is addicted to light courses. He returns to England to save from forcible marriage Harriet Byron, whom one of her innumerable adorers has kidnapped after a masquerade, and is hurrying across Hounslow Heath in a "chariot". Sir Charles's two sisters, Lady L. and Charlotte Grandison (afterwards Lady G) swear eternal friendship with Harriet, and recount to her the family history, including the tyrannical behaviour of the late naughty Sir Thomas to his children. After innumerable scenes of high sensibility, Clementina decides against her English suitor, and Sir Charles is free to make the lovliest woman in the world his own. Incidentally he does a quantity of good works — among them being the reconciliation of Sir Harry Beauchamp and his unmanageable wife, who had had a long dispute about the younger Beauchamp. So much will make the illustrations intelligible to those who have not read the complete work.
The Sir Charles Grandison was his magnum opus. He had the sympathy of affinity with his author. Richardson's naif sentimentality, his elaborate scenes, over-explicit and minute, in which nothing — not a word, or look, or tone — was left to the imagination of the reader, his propriety and state, all had their counterpart in Taylor's illustrations. Both men loved to add fact to fact, and line to line; all corners are explored, all accessories emphatically explained. The modern novelist will sometimes record an action and leave you to infer the motive from what he has told you of the person's character, and the modern illustrator will leave you in the dark as to the precise way in which a lady's frill is finished, or the pattern in a carpet repeated. But Isaac Taylor and Richardson will permit no such mysteries.
The artist's explicitness in costume can scarcely be appreciated at a glance. A lady, minded to go to a bal poudre as a graceful Miss Grandison, or as the lovely Harriet herself, could perfectly well have a complete fancy costume made after Lady Grandison's coming-home attire, or the dinner dresses of Caroline and Charlotte. See the conscientious way in which Taylor has varied the trimming of these two ladies' skirts, and the perfect manner in which he has rendered the several textures in the "head" of the weeping Caroline — the taffeta puff, the quilled ribbon, the lapet of exquisite lace that lies on her powdered hair. See also Lady Beauchamp's still more fearful and wonderful coiffure, and the lace pendant therefrom. And Sir Charles's travelling dress, enclosing a figure which, allowing for the long-bodied and short-legged ideal of the day, is exquisitely drawn — so solid, clean, and clear. See also the dress of the General in the Porretta Palace, and the mosaic marble pavement. The ecclesiastical costume has evidently presented some difficulty to the realistic Taylor, but he came nearer to the facts than Stothard, who put his Bolognese Bishop into a surplice. And all Taylor's extraordinary detail is expressed precisely as he intended. He "interpreted" himself, and thus had no engraver's misapprehensions to complain of. Moreover, his labour is all the more direct and unmistakeable, inasmuch as he engraved directly on the metal. That means of engraving bids fair to become, in time, one of several lost arts, of which the place is taken by new handicrafts. The many mechanical processes now in use have driven out the human precision of Taylor's method, but the relics we have of it will never lose their value. Energy, dramatic power, or singular grace cannot be claimed for him, but he was beforehand with the Pre-raphaelite movement-in part at least of its principles and practice.
THE following is a passage from Sir Charles Grandison's account of his rescue of Miss Byron from the hands of Sir Hargraves Pollexfen. He has heard a lady scream from the flying carriage, has challenged, stopped, and felled her captor.
I had not
drawn my sword: I hope I shall never be provoked to do so
in a
private quarrell ... The lady, though greatly terrified,
had
disengaged herself from the cloak. I had not leisure to
consider her
dress; but I was struck with her figure, and more with her
terror.
... Have you not read ... (Pliny, I think, gives the
relation) of a
frightened bird that, pursued by a hawk, flew for
protection into the
bosum of a man passing by? In like manner, your lovely
cousin, the
moment I returned to the chariot door, instead of
accepting my
offered hand, threw herself in my arms. “O save me! Save
me!” She
was ready to faint ... I carried the lovely creature round
Sir
Hargrave's horses and seated her in my chariot. “Be
assured,
Madam,” said I, “that you are in honourable hands.”
Sir
Thomas: "Let me know, Caroline, what hopes you
have
given to Lord L. — Or rather, perhaps, what hopes he
has given you?
Why are you silent?
Answer me, girl."
Caroline: "I hope, Sir, I shall not disgrace my father in thinking well of Lord L."
Caroline: "I hope, Sir, I shall not disgrace my father in thinking well of Lord L."
*
*
* *
* *
Sir Thomas: "Well, Charlotte, tell me, when are you to begin to estrange from me your affections? When are you to begin to think that your Father stands in the way of your happiness?"
*
* *
* *
*
"I could not help speaking here," said Miss Grandison, '" Oh, Sir, how you wound me!'"
SIR Charles regains the friendship of Jeronymo by saving his life, though the young Italian had been estranged by our admirable Englishman's reproof of his evil ways. Sir Charles writes:
Jeronymo
pursued the adventure which had occasioned the difference;
and one of
the lady's admirers envying him his supposed success ,
hired him ...
They had got him into their toils in a little thicket I,
attended by
two servants, happened to be passing, when a frightened
horse ran
across the way, his bridle broken, and his saddle bloody.
... I soon
beheld a man struggling on the ground with two ruffians
... I leapt
out of the post-chaise and drew my sword, running towards
them as
fast as I could, calling as if I had a number with me. On
this they
fled. I hastened to the unhappy man: but how much was I
surprised
when I found him to be the Barone della Porretta!
THE settlement of the Beauchamps' conjugal quarrel is one of Sir Charles's most delicate achievements. He quells the stepmother's temper, brings the father into courteous relation with his wife, and gets £600 a year, with arrears, for the" absent youth". As usual, the episode ends with the praises of the incomparable man:
"NOW,
my
dear Lady Beauchamp,"
said I, ... "permit me to give you joy. All doubts and
misgivings so triumphantly got over, so solid a foundation
laid for
family harmony. What was the moment of your nuptials to
this? Sir
Harry, I congratulate you: you may be, and I believe you
have been,
as happy as most men,
but now you will be
still happier.
RICHARDSON'S English and Italian personages alike are as eager to enter upon "scenes" as moderns are to escape from those demonstrations of sensibility. The book is indeed a series of scenes, but those which take place in the noble family of Porretta are naturally the most emotional. The fifth illustration presents the incident of the general entreaty to Clementina that she should consent to bring herself to favour an Italian suitor. All the members of the family meet in the room of the still invalided Jeronymo, who writes to Sir Charles:
Then
did we all supplicate her to oblige us. The General was at
first
tenderly urgent; the Bishop
besought her; the young Marchioness pressed her; my Mother
took her
hand between both hers, and in silent tears could only
sigh over it;
and lastly, my Father dropt down on one knee to her: "My
daughter, my child," said he, "oblige me." Your
Jeronymo could not restrain his tears. She fell on her
knees: “0 my
Father," said she, "rise,
or
I shall die at your feet! Rise, my Father!"
FINALLY, Sir Charles takes his bride to the chief of his ancestral houses, Grandison Hall which Harriet had not before seen. She writes:
At
our alighting, Sir Charles (after paying his compliments
in a most
respectful manner to Lady W)
clasping
me in his arms, "I congratulate you, my dearest life,"
said he, "on your
entrance into your own house. The last Lady Grandison and
the present
might challenge the whole British Nation to produce
their equals." Then turning to everyone of his guests,
those of
my family first, as they were strangers to the place, he
said the
kindest, the politest things that ever proceeded from the
mouth of
man. I wept for joy, I would have spoken, but could not.
Everybody
congratulated the happy Harriet. Dr
Bartlett [the
excellent Chaplain] was
approaching to welcome us, but drew back until our mutual
congratulations were over. He then appeared. "I present to
you,
my dear Dr Bartlett," said the best of men, "the lovely
friend whom you have so long wished to see mistress of
this house."
... "God bless you, Madam!" tears in his eyes, "God
bless you both!" Then kissed my offered cheek. He could
say no
more: I could not speak distinctly.