The more astute among my readers may have noticed something a bit funny going on in the past several posts—in writing about The History of Emily Montague, I have hardly mentioned Emily Montague. It’s not that I have anything against her; she’s a perfectly lovely heroine. Beautiful, intelligent, virtuous, sympathetic: everything Colonel Rivers could hope for in a wife. Yes, she’s a bit insipid and soppy, and hardly as much fun as her best friend Bell. But I don’t blame her for it. After all, it could be a lot worse.
You should know that my lack of posting about Emily does somewhat mirror her role in the novel though too. She’s the female half of the key romance, but she’s not the primary letter-writer (I even thought for a while that she might not write any of the letters, in some kind of funny twist), and she doesn’t drive much of the story, although by the end when she and Rivers are actually together she’s a bit more prominent. But this book is really more about him.
And Rivers is sort of an interesting guy. Last week I complained about his womanishness, but I really took a shine to him anyway. He’s not terribly original, but I enjoy my eighteenth-century Enlightened men, and this is definitely a Thing. And I also wanted to share a bit because a lot of the same ideas are going to come up in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker.
First, we have Rivers’s funny modern ideas, about women voting and legislation without representation and suchlike. He also says, early in the novel, regarding the Native Americans:
If I thought it necessary to suppose they were not natives of the country, and that America was peopled later than the other quarters of the world, I should imagine them the descendants of Tartars; as nothing can be more easy than their passage from Asia, from which America is probably not divided; or, if it is, by a very narrow channel. But I leave this to those who are better informed, being a subject on which I honestly confess my ignorance.
When I read that, I was a bit shocked. And I had a hard time trying to get the internets to tell me when the idea of an Asian migration became current, because I sure hadn’t realized it was that old. Here I honestly confess my ignorance.
And then, we already know something of Rivers’s idea of the good life. He wants a nice wife he can talk to and relate to, and he’s fine with not having too much money because it’s much better to go be productive out in the country rather than flashy and superficial in town. He gets more and more into his politics toward the end, when he’s back in England and becoming a nice, upright citizen. He writes to Captain Fitzgerald, his fellow soldier and husband to Bell:
I, on my side, am selecting spots for plantations of trees; and mean, like a good citizen, to serve at once myself and the public, by raising oaks, which may hereafter bear the British thunder to distant lands.
I believe we country gentlemen, whilst we have spirit to keep ourselves independent, are the best citizens, as well as subjects, in the world.
Happy ourselves, we wish not to destroy the tranquillity of others; intent on cares equally useful and pleasing, with no views but to improve our fortunes by means equally profitable to ourselves and to our country, we form no schemes of dishonest ambition; and therefore disturb no government to serve our private designs.
…
The love of order, of moral harmony, so natural to virtuous minds, to minds at ease, is the strongest tie of rational obedience.
…
Convinced of the excellency of our constitution, in which liberty and prerogative are balanced with the steadiest hand, he will not endeavour to remove the boundaries which secure both: he will not endeavour to root it up, whilst he is pretending to give it nourishment: he will not strive to cut down the lovely and venerable tree under whose shade he enjoys security and peace.In short, and I am sure you will here be of my opinion, the man who has competence, virtue, true liberty, and the woman he love, will chearfully obey the laws which secure him these blessings, and the prince under whose mild sway he enjoys them.
Yes, that’s the thing about Rivers, who I must conclude is the voice of Frances Brooke here. Very liberal when it comes to love and marriage, but it’s really all about ordered liberty. Any right-thinking man will plant oak trees to further the empire and obey his mild prince! It makes me sort of want to pat him on the head or something.
I make fun, but I really do like him. The conservatism is clearly there, but there is also good Enlightenment insight, mixed with an ultrapositive view of human nature. In another letter to Fitzgerald:
I agree with you, that mankind are born virtuous, and that it is education and example which make them otherwise.
The believing other men knaves is not only the way to make them so, but is also an infallible method of becoming such ourselves.
A false and ill-judged method of instruction, by which we imbibe prejudices instead of truths, makes us regard the human race as beasts of prey; not as brothers, united by one common bond, and promoting the general interest by pursuing our own particular one.
There is nothing of which I am more convinced than that, “True self-love and social are the same”:
That those passions which make the happiness of individuals, tend directly to the general good of the species.
The beneficent Author of nature has made public and private happiness the same; man has in vain endeavoured to divide them; but in the endeavour he has almost destroyed both.
‘Tis with pain I say, that the business of legislation in most countries seems to have been to counter-work this wise order of Providence, which has ordained, that we shall make others happy in being so ourselves.
Really a change after Pamela, eh? It’s funny, in one way the lessons are the same: virtue and happiness go together. But virtuous happiness looks awfully different to Frances Brooke, don’t you think?
Recent Comments