University of Virginia Library

The Reviser Observed: The Last Volume of Sir Charles Grandison
by
Jocelyn Harris

It is, indeed, quickly discoverable, that Consultation and Compliance can conduce little to the Perfection of any literary Performance. . . . (Rambler, No. 23, 5 June 1750).

The last volume of Samuel Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison (1753-54) is decidedly odd. The story does not end in any obvious way, for the hero has already married the first heroine, Harriet Byron, in the sixth and penultimate volume. The second heroine, Clementina della Porretta, is left drifting and purposeless; a third candidate, Olivia, does not appear at all. Sir Charles's ward, Emily Jervois, remains single and unhappily devoted to her guardian; Harriet, after a near-miscarriage, is not yet delivered of her child; and scenes meant to show the shrewish Charlotte Grandison in her tamed state are simply not convincing. Conversations are arbitrarily renewed from earlier volumes, and two characters whom we have virtually forgotten, Sir Hargrave Pollexfen and Sir Rowland Meredith, suddenly reappear. The result is a seventh volume half a volume over-measure (Carroll, p. 301)[1] which has amply fulfilled Richardson's own predictions of debate and confusion (Carroll, p. 296).

That the last volume of Grandison is aesthetically wayward, digressive, and often distorting to characterisation and probability could be explained first if Richardson had not made up his mind how to end the work, and second if he had revised hastily in the months before publication of the first duodecimo edition and the second quarto edition

on 14 March 1754. (For a printing history of Grandison see the Chronology of the Oxford English Novels edition, ed. Jocelyn Harris, 1972). Certainly there seem to be remarkably close links between the material of the last volume and the letters that Richardson exchanged with his friends from August 1753 to February 1754. It looks very much as though he were consulting them in order to revise in proof.

Such behavior would be entirely typical. In his own mind, Richardson was not primarily an artist: he saw himself as a moralist for whom the fable was significant as a vehicle for the message; if the fable did not make its point, then it must be changed completely and in detail. To succeed, the work must be morally invulnerable.

To this end, he had answered the criticisms made of Pamela I by Fielding and others in the explanatory and defensive Pamela II (Owen Jenkins, "Richardson's Pamela and Fielding's 'Vile Forgeries'", PQ, 44 [1965], 200-210); he checked Clarissa even as he wrote it, against the opinions of his friends (T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel, Samuel Richardson, A Biography, 1971, pp. 205-213); he responded to the furor consequent on that novel's publication by a quantity of remedial revisions to the second, third and fourth editions, some under the guise of "restorations";[2] and he altered both Pamela and Clarissa extensively for later editions (T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel, "Richardson's Revisions of Pamela", SB, 20 [1967], 61-68; Kinkead-Weekes, supra; Eaves and Kimpel, pp. 317-318). He would compile an Index for Grandison that tried to control the reader's moral response, and he would refine character and situation right out of existence in the Moral Sentiments of 1755, to the same purpose. Grandison itself would be revised five times, the substantive revisions usually corresponding to the comments he had received (see the Textual Note to the O.E.N. Grandison).

In the writing of Pamela and Clarissa, Richardson had enjoyed some measure of imaginative freedom: Pamela I occupied only two months (Carroll, p. 41), and Clarissa, vastly more ambitious, was in first draft within two years, although the revising took a year and a half more (Eaves and Kimpel, pp. 205-213; also their article, "The Composition of Clarissa and Its Revision before Publication", PMLA, 83 [1968], 416-428). But the wrangling over Clarissa induced in

Richardson an almost paralyzing caution. He had moreover no irresistible plot, and at first starting on Grandison he could only attempt to clarify in the new book the unresolved issues of the last, that is, the nature of a good man, and the parent-child relationship. During the four long years while Richardson wrote his final work, he consulted his friends anxiously and continuously (see Introduction to the O.E.N. edition). He read the manuscript to his family and to friends in residence, he sent excerpts to absentees, he encouraged visitors to sample portions. Sometimes Richardson begged help for his balky muse, sometimes he needed a corroborating authority, but usually he treated his friends as representatives of the public to come. That is, he sought their response that he might anticipate trouble after publication. For instance, he could place suitable remonstrances in the mouth of an authoritative figure, or, more subtly, expand a rebuttal into an anecdote, a scene, or even a new character. Within the manuscript, Richardson could have the last, definitive word.

But once printing had begun, this was no longer true. What was done in the first six volumes was done, and Richardson's very last chance to answer criticism of the whole lay in the last volume. Certainly we find him pressing his friends to comment on earlier volumes with an urgency that is otherwise inexplicable. His fear of appearing vulnerable he showed openly to Lady Bradshaigh: "I shall be half afraid, that if you are so reserved as you mention, with the two first Vols. that you are ashamed of them, and keep them from your select Friends, till I have exposed myself by a general Publication, that it may not be your Fault" (FC XI, f.35). He invited comment from a number of his acquaintances in London, Lancashire, Ireland and even Holland by sending them single proof sheets, bundles of proofs and unbound pre-publication volumes (for information about his friends, see Eaves and Kimpel), begging, for instance, volume and page references for the "kind Hints of Correction" offered by Patrick Delany, Dean of Down, and his household (Carroll, pp. 260-263).

But it was Lady Bradshaigh, unsuccessful pleader for Clarissa's life, and constant enthusiast during the composition of Grandison, who was in October 1753 most closely urged to chronicle her reactions to Clementina (Carroll, p. 244) and again, in November, when he did not know that she had responded with thirty-two pages, to Clementina, Harriet, Charlotte, and Sir Charles (Carroll, p. 248).

This long letter, finally dated 27 November 1753 (FC XI, ff. 41-48), Richardson answered with the utmost scrupulousness on 8 December (Carroll, pp. 249-260), drawing up friends on one side and the

other of her argument. He repeated his request not to be spared, particularly on the matter of the "divided love" of Sir Charles, torn between Harriet and Clementina. But most significant is his promise that the last volume would leave her complaints about Sir Charles's divided affection without foundation.

Lady Bradshaigh, dashed by his counter-arguments, was reluctant to write, and had to be encouraged to give her opinion on the "Catastrophe" (4 January 1754, Carroll, p. 270). But why should he want to know, unless the "Catastrophe" were not yet in print? In his first draft of the ending he had been indecisive, telling his friend Thomas Edwards on 25 October 1752 that he thought he was at "a Period of my Story: Except I change the Catastrophe on going over it again" (Carroll, p. 220), and even as he began printing the first volume informed him on 20 February 1753 that "The Story, however, is not yet concluded" (Carroll, p. 221). Much later in the year, on 5 October 1753, Lady Bradshaigh was told that the catastrophe still lay in the "unprinted Part of my Story" (Carroll, p. 244).

Lady Bradshaigh responded vehemently on 14 January 1754, with material that Richardson appears, from echoes in the last volume, to have used to discuss the divided love and for the resolution of the whole story (FC XI, ff. 62-65). He complained to her a month before publication, on 8 February 1754, "I have a great deal to do, and but one Volume to do it in" (Carroll, p. 279), and six days later still wanted to know whether the means taken to impel Clementina into marriage with the Count of Belvedere, her second choice, were "natural" (Carroll, p. 291). It looks as though the ending could still have been changed.

Richardson had, then, actively sought advice about his conclusion for at least a year. There was plenty of time to act on suggested alterations: the printing of almost six volumes and part of the seventh occupied him for six months, and when the book was pirated in Dublin, he had an excuse to postpone publication of the seventh volume for seven months more. From the beginning of August 1753, when he stopped his press, to the end of February 1754, Richardson was free to reconsider and, if necessary, to rewrite.

Richardson originally planned to publish the seventh volume in early February 1754 (Carroll, p. 237), but the delay extended to 14 March. His reasons were two-fold, he said: the town was empty, and he wished to prevent the Irish pirates from completing their edition. "But", he added mysteriously, "this I am at present silent about for Reasons" (Carroll, p. 242). He repeated to Lady Bradshaigh on 4

January 1754 just as mysteriously that there were "Several Causes conspiring to delay [publication], perhaps till some time in the next Month" (FC XI, ff. 58-61).

If the "Reasons" and "Causes" were his revising activities, all would become clear. Certainly the circumstantial evidence suggests that he revised in response to correspondence during this period, and two pieces of evidence prove that he was certainly tinkering with the proofs as late as 8 February 1754. Could this be possible? How many sheets were involved? And could they be printed in the time?

In the Case of Samuel Richardson, Printer, published 14 September 1753 to attack the Dublin pirates, Richardson estimated that the pirates had "Five entire Volumes [12°], the greatest Part of the Sixth, and . . . several Sheets of the Seventh and last; but the Work being stopt when the Wickedness was known, they cannot have the better half of the concluding Volume". By 5 October he thought that they had less, "[no] more than three or four Shts. of Vol. VI and about half of Vol. VII (for I stopt, as soon as I was apprized of the Villainy)" (Carroll, p. 242).

That is, the first half of the Vol. VII was already set, by August, and only eleven sheets remained to be composed. Printing need not have begun, only proofing. This the bibliographical evidence supports: when Richardson printed his third edition 12°, which he decided upon early in December 1753 (Carroll, p. 260), he used the formes of the first edition, revised, for signatures K-U in the third edition (William Merritt Sale, Samuel Richardson, A Bibliographical Record of his Literary Career with Historical Notes, 1936, p. 68). Both editions have substantially similar contents and identical pagination, except for signatures B and C. That the formes were still standing suggests that they had recently been in use, for the first edition.

Signatures B-I (presumably, the "several sheets" the pirates stole, and the place that Richardson stopped) he printed from different settings of type in the two duodecimo editions because of the necessity of inserting into the third edition the "unlucky omission", as he called it, that had been tacked on to the end of the first. (The pirated edition, which came out some time later, is identical with Richardson's first edition. Presumably the pirates discarded the "half of Vol. VII" they had in stolen proofs, in order to appear legitimate by copying Richardson's published version.)

The last two thirds of the eleven sheets K-U could have been set and proofed at any time between August 1753 and February 1754, for they contain the Index which Richardson was already drawing up in

July 1753 (Carroll, p. 238); the four-page list of Similes and Allusions; the Concluding Note written in December 1753 (Carroll, p. 264); and Richardson's Address to the Reader, which was printed off the same formes (with obvious changes in pagination and signatures) as the pamphlet he published about the piracy on 1 February 1754. These addenda occupy O6v-U5, leaving only four and a half sheets of actual story to be revised at the last moment.

By 26 December 1753 an extensive change could no longer be made to signature B in the first edition, presumably because it would unduly put out all those sheets already set ("about half of Vol. VII"). Instead, Richardson had to print it as an "unlucky omission" at the end. For two smaller revisions, though, Richardson reprinted a whole signature, C (which contains no cancellans), to insert first an apology on shell-taste and second an assertion by Sir Charles that he loved Harriet before she loved him. Both revisions were to please Lady Bradshaigh, as he told her in his letter of 8 February 1754 (FC X1, ff. 66-68, Carroll, p. 281). And when on 5 February she sent a scandalous interpretation of Olivia's conduct which applied only too well to Clementina's actions in the last volume, Richardson almost certainly rushed to contain the inevitable criticism by extensive alterations from signature I onwards.

It is perfectly feasible that Richardson, in order to receive as much comment as he could, printed his last volume at a very late date, that is, the 19½ duodecimo sheets in the first edition and the corresponding 30 (A-Z, Aa-Ff1) octavo sheets in the second edition. He was indeed busy at the time with House of Commons records (Carroll, p. 247), but he refused or parted with at least five pieces of work (Barbauld, V, 237), and sent out the first six volumes of the third edition to seven other printers (Carroll, p. 301). The seventh, vital, volume he kept to himself, and he kept it secret. No-one, it appears, saw either the manuscript or the proofs of the seventh volume, nor were prepublication copies circulated in the manner of the former six. "None of my own Family", wrote Richardson to Lady Bradshaigh on 4 January 1754, "nor more than One Family, and two Persons more, have any Notion of the Ending (necessary Workmen excepted); and they are all as secret as the Night" (Carroll, p. 272). Even these few, whoever they were, apparently had only a "Notion", and had not viewed the manuscript. Richardson the printer could offer extraordinary privileges to Richardson the author in the way of revising, and so long as he kept strict secrecy, he had perfect freedom.

Twenty days elapsed between 5 February 1754, when Richardson

received Lady Bradhaigh's alarming letter that applied to Clementina, and 25 February, when Richardson sent her the last volume in the first and second editions (Carroll, p. 295), more than enough time for the requisite printing, gathering, and distribution.

Richardson had plenty of men: for the earlier volumes work went on "at convenience" with "30 or 40" workmen (An Address to the Public), and he "took in help" (numbers unspecified) for the seventh volume (Barbauld V, 237). So at least 13 men, on average, must have been employed in each of his three printing-houses (see his Case), working on most or all of the nine presses that Richardson used near the end of his career (William Merritt Sale, Samuel Richardson, Master Printer, Cornell Studies in English 37, [1950], 29). His workmen's swift fingers could set 1000 or even 1500 letters an hour (Eaves and Kimpel, p. 166)—and we are only concerned here with revision, not with the first setting of the whole. His pressmen must have been equally able. Working for piece-rates, they might well go all out for a week's rich reward: Joseph Moxon's figure for a two-man press of 250 impressions per hour (Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing, ed. Herbert Davis and Harry Carter, 1958, pp. 343-344) might well be exceeded, since at the Bowyer Press in the week ending 28 September 1734, six men handling forty-three formes appear to have averaged three hundred and forty-seven impressions an hour, allowing a week of sixty hours (Bowyer printing ledger, Grolier Club accession number 19472, on loan to the Bodleian Library. Drawn to my attention by Keith Maslen).

For the duodecimo volume there were 3000 copies to be printed, 1000 for the octavo (Carroll, p. 259). If we consider only the sheets that were definitely printed after the August piracy, signatures K-U and C duodecimo occupy 12 sheets, or 24 formes, and thus 72,000 impressions were required. The corresponding signatures in octavo, Q-Z, Aa-Ff1, occupy 14 sheets, or 28 formes, requiring 28,000 impressions. The total for the two editions is 100,000 impressions. One press working at 250 impressions per hour could accomplish the whole in 400 hours, or nine presses in almost 45 hours. With an eight-hour day (or longer) and a six-day week, this would fall well within the twenty days that passed between Lady Bradshaigh's seemingly influential letter and Richardson's dispatch to her of the last volume. Indeed, it would have been possible to alter and print the other five signatures, D-I, in addition.

It was, then, physically possible for Richardson, the habitual and secret reviser, to have altered the proofs of the last Grandison volume. But what did he think he had to change?

Most of the evidence for revision is circumstantial, that is, the text of the last volume wears on occasion uncanny resemblance to letters that Richardson had received. But the case is supported by the two items that I have already mentioned as certain proof of revision: the second, Sir Charles's assertion of love, I shall discuss shortly, but the first arose from Lady Bradshaigh's complaint on 27 November 1753 that she was "half affronted" at Lord G. giving his shells to Emily, since she was but a child (FC XI, ff. 41-48). Richardson apologised flippantly on 8 December 1753 (FC XI, ff. 49-53), and only remembered in his letter of 8 February 1754 why she would not be mollified: Lady Bradshaigh was herself a shell-worker, and had condescended to donate a piece to the Richardson's lesser parlour at North-End. The blunder was dreadful, and he could only offer her, within the work, an impeccable authority. "What is done, is done", he wrote, "But I have thrown into the last Volume, a Hint, that the excellent Mother of Sir Charles Grandison delighted in Shell-works" (FC XI, ff. 66-68). This hint appears on p. 29, C3r, and proves absolutely that signature C (which contains no cancellans), though an early sheet of the volume, was rewritten and printed after 8 February.

With such definite proof of tinkering in mind, it is legitimate to suspect other things in signature C. For instance, an anonymous letter received about 26 December 1753 attacked Sir Charles for abandoning his tenants and living abroad (FC XV, 3, ff. 25-26). In the reprinted signature C can be found what seems to be a defence of Sir Charles, for it appears that, though he was indeed an absentee landlord, he took a close personal interest in his estate and tenants, and for their sake had managed to study husbandry and law on his busy continental tours (VII, 44-45).

If these debatable matters in signature C could be changed, why not miscellaneous things in other signatures? Alterations need not, of course, all have taken place as late as 8 February 1754, and close correlations between the text and letters received over this period suggest that they could have been made at any time. For instance, one of Richardson's main reasons for writing Grandison had been his dismay at the favourable response accorded Lovelace and Tom Jones, so that he set out in the new book to show the true horror of rakery once again. But his flighty ward, Sophia Wescomb, confessed in July 1753 that she liked the gay figure of his anti-example, Sir Hargrave Pollexfen (FC XIV, 3, ff. 94-95). Reproved (Carroll, p. 241), she suggested provocatively on 28 August that a punishment for her indelicacy about Sir Hargrave "shou'd be to Marry her first to [him] & afterwards bring

her acquainted, & make her terribly in Love with [Lovelace]" (FC XIV, 3, ff. 102-103). The allusion to Madame de la Fayette's Princess of Cleves must have been instantly recognisable, and in an odd scene of Volume VII the book is discussed. Mrs Shirley, until now a stiff allegory of Resigned Old Age, suddenly waxes eloquent about her life and love. As a girl she had wondered, "Suppose, after I have vowed Love to a man quite indifferent to me, I should meet with the very one, the kindred soul, who must irresistably claim my whole heart?". "A Duke de Nemours!" says her friend Mrs Eggleton (a character introduced merely to answer her back), "taking up the Princess of Cleves, that unluckily lay on my table". Thus the moral, that the Princess should not be copied (Letter 42, K4r-K9r).

Another young lady, Susanna Highmore, the painter's daughter, was equally incorrigible in her admiration of rakes (see Richardson's response, Carroll, pp. 272-275), and it may well be for her sake that Greville, a rake from the first volume who made threats on Sir Charles's life in the sixth, suddenly and unsuitably applies for Lucy Selby's hand in the seventh. He is rejected perfunctorily (p. 191, I12r) so that she can marry an Irish peer hastily found for her before the book ends. But Greville's proposal allows of a discussion in which occur several concepts and phrases from Richardson's letter answering Miss Highmore: where he had rebuked her for being diverted with rakes, for judging too charitably, and for failing to perceive their vanity, Harriet Byron reproves in similar terms a sullen Lucy, until now a characterless good girl (pp. 71-74, D12r-E1v).

Another item is equally suspect: Richardson knew by December 1753 (Carroll, p. 255) that some readers objected to the Grandison sisters' way of finding out Harriet's love for Sir Charles (II, Letter 5), and the episode is unexpectedly defended in the last volume (p. 96, E12v).

Other comments seem to have affected characters. Lady Bradshaigh loathed Olivia, for example (FC XI, ff. 41-48), and except for a letter from her which does not appear, Olivia is conspicuously absent from the last volume. This in spite of the fact that Richardson had originally planned her story in considerably more detail than appears in the book (Carroll, pp. 278-279).

Emily had also been attacked, for her "Love" of Sir Charles when it should have been, Lady Bradshaigh thought, the "wholey filial" affection proper to a ward (FC XI, ff. 41-48). Mrs Delany sent Mrs Dewes a similar criticism on 3 December 1753: "she ought not to have been in love! She was too young to be won by the shining virtues

of her guardian; they should rather have given her an awe for him as for a parent, unless he had not been the man he was, and had courted her love, for he always treats her as a favourite child". She repeated on 21 December 1753 that Richardson was wrong to show Emily in love so young, "unless he means to show young women how they may by resolution and proper endeavours get the better of any passion". This comment she planned to deliver in person, "when I see Mr Richardson" (Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, ed. Lady Llanover, 1861, III, 1st series, pp. 251, 256).

These three points, the suspect nature of Emily's affection, the part Sir Charles might have played in encouraging it, and the method of escape from her compromising situation, are all to be found explicated in the last volume. Harriet points out to Emily (pp. 64-69, D8v-D11r) the curious precocity of her love, but Emily accuses Harriet of jealousy, insisting that her love is admiration only. Richardson can then, typically, turn on the "censorious" who accuse Emily of a love more than filial.

Emily accuses herself, with pretty ingenuousness, of indelicacy in loving a married man, but she may be forgiven by Harriet ("Don't hate me", cries Emily to Harriet, and to us). She is freed from Sir Charles in the next half-signature (pp. 83-96, E6r-E12v) by Mrs Delany's solution: she resolves to leave. Her behavior on departure is beyond reproach; that of Sir Charles shows "The Brother, the affectionate Friend, and Father, I may say" (p. 153, H5r). References to her extreme youth make it impossible for her to love Sir Charles in any culpable way, but for the same reason she cannot marry Beauchamp, a loose end annoying to the tidy-minded reader. From Richardson's point of view, a situation may have been saved. "Thank God," says Emily, "that I made my escape in time." Did she really mean, before the last volume was printed?

The third character to be attacked was Charlotte Grandison, now Lady G. Mrs Donnellan had complained as far back as 9 November 1752 about Charlotte's coarseness (Barbauld IV, 76-77), criticism echoed on 3 December 1753 by Mrs Delany (Autobiography, III, 1st series, p. 251), and by Lady Bradshaigh, who on 11 December 1753 particularly specified her "contemptible usage of her Husband" (FC XI, ff. 54-57). With unusual meekness, Richardson agreed on 4 January 1754 that "her Sauciness to her Husband is inexcusable" (FC XI, ff. 58-61).

Because of his last-minute capitulation, it is interesting to observe that Charlotte, while really bad in signatures B-I (especially p. 7,

where she pretends Lord G. has a breeding fly in his mouth; and pp. 167-168, where she remains petulant), undergoes a radical reformation from signature K onwards, the sheets that remained to be set after the piracy. Her reconciliation with her husband follows the usual defensive pattern: self-reproach met by absolution from the victim (Letter 43, pp. 209-213, K9-K11r). The whole scene also provides a timely "proof" that prudence, not self-willed romanticism, is the best guide in marriage—a theory elaborated by Charlotte in Letter 42. This is a new Charlotte, and Harriet anticipates the general surprise: "Such a Setting-out in matrimony; who would have expected Charlotte to make such a wife, mother, nurse!" (p. 295, O4r). Who indeed, and the character suffers for it.

Harriet also was criticized by Mrs Delany for "telling her love to so many!" (Autobiography, III, 1st series, p. 252; also Carroll, pp. 244-245). Lady Bradshaigh agreed (FC XI, ff. 41-48), especially over the choice of old Sir Rowland Meredith, the Welsh knight, as confidant. "I think her frank-heartedness, hurts her delicasey", she complained. "Miss Byron's declarations of love, for a man who had not made her any . . . will for Ever remain a blemish in the Character". Only Sir Charles's addresses should have drawn her from her reserve.

By return post Richardson stressed Harriet's adoptive relationship to Sir Rowland (Carroll, pp. 251-257): to her "father" Sir Rowland and to her "mother" Lady D. Harriet must tell the truth. Richardson was thus clearly anxious about Harriet's openness, and when Sir Rowland, by now long lost to the reader, reappears in signature D (pp. 56-62) officiously to stress the relationship, one can at least be suspicious that these scenes were late insertions.

On the second point, that Harriet loved first, there is definite proof that Richardson tampered with the text at a late date, for he wrote to Lady Bradshaigh on 8 December 1753, "And is Love then a vincible Passion, that a Lady must have an Example set her by the Man? I wish it were so. I have made this Nicety taken notice of between Sir Charles and Harriet in the last Volume" (Carroll, p. 257). This "Nicety" must be the revelation in signature C, reset for the shell-taste insertion, that Sir Charles fell in love with Harriet in the fraction of time before she could fall in love with him (pp. 38-39). At one stroke Richardson answered all who objected to Harriet's loving first, and to some extent made her immodest prattling allowable. "You know not", says Sir Charles, "the struggle it cost me . . . to conceal my Love", and indeed we do not. From his first sight of Harriet, we are now told, Sir Charles was a striking example of the vincibility of passion. Beside this circumstantial

evidence, this inner contradiction, Richardson's open admission of revision is almost redundant.

Two clear pieces of evidence, then, one on the shells and one on the "Nicety", together with the close relationship of correspondence to printed text, suggest that C was reset as late as 8 February, and that B, D-O6r may also have been revised in proof before printing, affecting various topics and some characters.

A second group of revisions may have concerned the catastrophe The novel was doomed to dullness once the fortunate couple were married, and Richardson knew it. As early as June 1752 he had startled the young ladies by threatening violent extinction to the hero (Carroll, pp. 215-217), and distinct traces of this fright are left in Volume VI. Nearer the time of printing, Richardson obviously longed to finish the work with the éclat of Clarissa rather than the ordinariness of Pamela II, and to Lady Bradshaigh on 5 October 1753 he hopefully revived the notion of disaster: "The unprinted Part of my Story, hurries on the Catastrophe, the strange, perhaps, unnatural Catastrophe" (Carroll, p. 244).

She was just reading of Sir Charles's return to Italy in the fourth volume, and guessed at once that Richardson must have a polygamous solution in mind (they had debated the topic on previous occasions). Now affairs must be wholly tragical, unless "your Hero is to be reserv'd, to honour the Frumping body of old Batchalors" (FC XI, ff. 41-48).

Richardson, having sent her the fifth and sixth volumes, told her on 8 December 1753 not to be frightened, a good part of the difficulty would be over by the end of the sixth, where the marriage takes place. But he insisted that a polygamous scheme for sharing Sir Charles might still be magnanimously proposed by a first wife, elaborating enthusiastically on a wholesale slaughter of Clementina's family (Carroll, pp. 252-253).

"Good Heaven! are you Mad?" cried Lady Bradshaigh (FC XI, ff. 54-57). But Richardson kept his secret, only telling her on 4 January 1754 (Carroll, p. 270) that some readers objected to the possibility that Clementina would marry the Count of Belvedere, her parents' choice, and some wanted to see her in a nunnery. Laurana, her next inheritor, should be killed, to prevent her fortune going out of the Porretta family. Another group wanted to kill the noble lady herself, and others guessed Harriet would die, to make room for Clementina. (Thomas Edwards reported on 28 February 1754 that the rumour of Harriet's child-bed death "is got abroad pretty much", but discounted

it [MS Bodl. 1012, pp. 155-156]. Maybe he had inside knowledge.) Or, he repeated, he could have them both, "by Consent".

"Now, Madam", Richardson concluded, "you will oblige me (tho' the Catastrophe, whatever it be, is decided) if you will favour me with your Choice, and your Reasons for it". But why should he offer her such a range of alternatives if he had indeed decided upon every detail of the conclusion? He did say that "in my murdering, and other Schemes", he only intended to amuse her, but Lady Bradshaigh was appalled. Reasons against such a tragedy she gave in plenty and in detail on 14 January and 5 February 1754, and if the ending did not come out as she wished, "I shall kick, and flounce and be very ungovernable" (FC XI, ff. 69-74).

Excited by her vehemence, Richardson wrote teasingly on 8 February 1754 that it was Harriet's very success that had made her enemies among the readers, so that a child-bed death would promote sympathetic grief (Carroll, pp. 276-278). Again on 14 February 1754 he reminded Lady Bradshaigh of his options, that Clementina should be thrown into a nunnery, or be stuck "among the stars", or that Harriet should die in child-bed. Some too had suggested that Sir Charles should be drowned, "But that is not his death. In such a death he could not be great. . . . Such a hero cannot fall alone, that's certain" (Carroll, p. 291).

Lady Bradshaigh was devastated. Writing on 22 February 1754 she burst out, "Death, Death, Death, is your Darling! Misery, Deep Distress, is what your Soul pants after". Utterly vexed that he had apparently paid no attention to her, she suggested bitterly that he might as well kill everyone in the book (FC XI, ff. 83-86). Richardson was at last contrite, and rushed to make amends on 25 February 1754, arguing that the contemporary time-scheme made too much "Business" impossible (Carroll, p. 296). But it is ridiculous to say that fictional work is subordinate to actual time. So why did Richardson loose his imagination in this way? It could well be that he was prepared to change the ending if Lady Bradshaigh had shown the slightest sign of approval.

The point at which the story could have been sent off on its new track still survives in the last volume: the pregnant Harriet faints, and people hear that "Lady Grandison was dying". She develops fever, only to be saved by blood-letting and the devoted nursing of Sir Charles. The episode begins and ends arbitrarily (pp. 235-238, L10r-L11v), and Charlotte reports it whimsically to prevent concern, but its very presence suggests a ghostly and tragical dimension into which

the story could have shifted at one stroke from Richardson's "murdering Pen".

A third group of probable revisions concerns the double love of Sir Charles for Clementina and Harriet. Richardson's lack of story had led him to the desperate expedient of introducing a second heroine, and for long enough he could not decide which one to elevate (Carroll, pp. 194-195). In the sixth volume he had hopefully elaborated on the concept of the divided heart, without, however, revealing in what proportions that heart was divided. But opposition to what Mrs Donnellan had called in 1752 the "unnatural affair" of the double love (Barbauld, IV, 75) ran high, and certain oddities in the last volume look like the belated products of a half-hearted compromise.

Richardson had canvassed opinion thoroughly, questioning whether he should make his heroines equal in status, or one superior to the other. When Mrs Chapone sympathised on 10 December 1753 (FC XIII, 1, ff. 94-97), he confessed that he was "much acustomed to the Attacks of very excellent Women on this head" (Carroll, p. 264). These he described as "Enthusiasts in the Theory of Love", but he could not similarly dismiss the anonymous report of 26 January 1754 that "The general Cry among the Men is, how much they despise a Man who could be in Love with two Women at once" (FC XV, 3, f. 32).

Lady Bradshaigh's wavering sympathies settled now on one heroine, now on the other, but she was adamant by 27 November 1753 about the main issue, that it was impossible "for a man to be Equally in love with two angells at the same time, do not suppose I can ever come into that" (FC XI, ff. 41-48). How could he ever marry, "for a devided heart he must ever have". Richardson claimed to relish her confusion on 8 December, but he asked anxiously for her opinion of the fifth volume octavo, which contains careful explanations of the delicate situation by having Sir Charles repeat his proposal to Harriet three whole times. These, he said, were "some Parts of my Management, which will be seen in a fuller Light than before". She would find Sir Charles, though a good man, "apprehensive of the Consequences of the Female Foible, double or divided Love &c., and like a good Man, indulgent to its Weaknesses" (Carroll, p. 259).

His suggestion that only a silly woman would care about the double love, Lady Bradshaigh staunchly repelled, insisting that an unequivocal choice should be made for Harriet (FC XI, ff. 54-57). Sir Charles should offer her the greater part of his admiration, and not allow any of his heart to Clementina. The proposals delighted her

("now he appears as free in his Choice, as if he never had seen Clementina"), with the reservation that his change of heart had happened in the twinkling of an eye. Richardson denied this hotly on 4 January 1754, drawing from detailed textual references a time-scheme that decently allowed the double love to become single. He still defended affection distributed where it was due, but admitted that in company with Mrs Donnellan, Miss Mulso had "exulted, by clapping her Wings . . . on your Ladiship's Censure of the divided Love" (Carroll, pp. 267, 272). Lady Bradshaigh pursued her advantage on 14 January, and again on 5 February 1754 (FC XI, ff. 62-65, 69-74).

The divided love was then an important issue not only during the composition of the book, but also while the seventh volume was being set. It would not be surprising that under such pressure Richardson might be convinced, and that he should attempt to suggest in the space left to him (contrary to earlier evidence) that Sir Charles preferred Harriet in the past and for the present, and that he would always do so in the future. The ways to convey this impression, together with the definitive exaltation of Harriet over Clementina, appear to have been derived from the letters of correspondents.

First, the establishment of Harriet's prior claim. Lady Bradshaigh, reading the first four volumes, was naturally puzzled by Richardson's indecision over the two heroines. On 27 November 1753 she thought he had explained himself satisfactorily before setting out for Italy ("Now we are to suppose him prepossest in favour of Miss Byron?"), but the emotional scenes with Clementina left her baffled: "He was actually in love with Miss Byron when he left England, he is now professedly so, with Clementina. I never heard of the like" (FC XI, ff. 41-48). Richardson was astonished (Carroll, p. 252), and demanded proof of her assertion that Harriet had always been first in Sir Charles's mind. This Lady Bradshaigh provided, drawing most of her items from the three proposals, which, as I have suggested, were very carefully written by Richardson in order to cast exactly this interpretation over past events. Clementina's love was "in a Manner forc'd upon him", whereas he loved Harriet and could not help it. Most clearly in the library at Colnebrooke (III, Letter 15) she saw his preference in his embarrassment and his silence, as well as in his statement to Dr Bartlett (VI, Letter 18) that he would have been pursuing his own inclinations if he loved Harriet (FC XI, ff. 62-65).

Richardson, grateful for the support she gave his creative consistency, wrote on 8 February 1754, "I will for the future have recourse to your Ladiship's Letters, when I am called upon to explain Passages

to less attentive Readers". As a reward he promised her that in the last volume she would find Sir Charles owning to Harriet that he had loved her from the moment he saw her, and before she could possibly have loved him. "I know you will be pleased when you come to this Place" (Carroll, pp. 281-282). This is the confession I have already referred to as a late alteration in C, the signature that was certainly reprinted on account of the shell-taste insertion. But consistency suffers (Sir Charles had declared himself impervious to personal attractions, in VI, Letter 18), as does morality, for Sir Charles attacks love at first sight as indelicate in a man, and worse in a woman (IV, Letter 18). Both Sir Charles and Harriet stand condemned by the revision.

Second, the preference of Harriet in the present. Lady Bradshaigh again provided a useful record of response, first being jealous of Clementina and then "over head and ears in love" with her (FC XI, f. 37). Soon she was writing, "I cannot conceive how Miss Byron can ever appear preferable to Clementina in the Eyes of Sr Charles. . . . Take care you do not make Hart. appear mean" (FC XI, ff. 41-48). She demanded the reinstating of all the "Insipid" Harriet's perfections, and that she be exalted above Clementina to be the first choice of Sir Charles, for Clementina's religion and country made her impossible as a wife.

Richardson pointed out that Harriet's main glory was to "prefer the noble Enthusiast to herself", blaming Lady Bradshaigh for being swayed by Clementina (Carroll, p. 252). She answered only that she had always preferred Harriet, the patient sufferer (FC XI, ff. 62-65), which made him complain on 14 February 1754 of an otherwise insensitive world: ". . . surely they were at least equally great. Clementina renounced the same man, in favour of her supreme duties, that Harriet gave up in favour of a Rival Sister; tho' she had reason to think he loved her; and had actually drawn a parallel between their two cases, in which religion, country, and almost every worldly and unworldly consideration gave her the Preference, were the happiness of the man so equally beloved by both my children to determine" (Carroll, pp. 288-289). The inflated style is suspect enough, but the arguments are also faulty. Richardson himself, as I have said, had been equally amazed by the blazing of the Italian lady's magnanimity, and had been tempted to make her the principal heroine (Carroll, pp. 194-195), while the claim that Clementina's noblest actions were the product of her insanity was an idea suggested recently by Lady Bradshaigh (see later). Harriet had no reason to believe that Sir Charles loved her on his return to Italy, in spite of Richardson's attempts to

suggest that he did in the sixth and seventh volumes. The parallel Harriet drew (III, Letter 23) does not make the points he says it does. And finally, the argument of incompatible religions and countries is only stressed late in the story.

So long as Clementina ran mad in romantic Italy, and Harriet pined passively in the cedar parlour, there could be no question about who was the more attractive. But in the seventh volume Richardson cunningly brought the two women face to face on Harriet's own territory, Clementina lowered in her own eyes by her flight, and Harriet exalted by her generosity. No chances are missed:

After their confrontation, both Clementina's father and her brother Jeronymo can pointedly prefer Harriet (p. 182, I7v; p. 284, N10v). Clementina's flight to England was probably not an insertion in proof, but the establishment of Harriet's primacy may well have been.

Third, the guarantee that Sir Charles would love her best in the future, which came from Mrs Chapone. The "fine conceal'd moral or Doctrine" she guessed on 10 December 1753 to be that the fluctuations in even the best man's heart would be allayed by "the Sacred Tye of Marriage" (Carroll, p. 265, n. 90). This phrase Richardson used first to answer Sophia Wescomb's idea that fancy could affect her after marriage (the "sacred engagement of marriage forbids it to be her tormentor", says Mrs Shirley, Letter 42, K4r-K9r), and again for the protection of Harriet, on the first page of the last sheet of text (p. 290, O1v):

Sir Charles's integrity and his marriage vows would thus keep him from straying—reasons that scarcely endear him to a romantic reader.

Sir Charles's divided heart was scrutinised by Lady Bradshaigh even at a verbal level on 27 November 1753 (FC XI, ff. 41-48): Sir Charles had praised Clementina in superlatives which excluded

Harriet, "The best, the noblest, the most amiable". Richardson tried to put her off (Carroll, p. 254), but she persisted that Harriet had been preferred for her frankness above all women "but one" (VI, Letter 8), while Clementina was always unique (FC XI, ff. 54-57). Richardson explained uncomfortably (Carroll, pp. 265-266) that Sir Charles could not make an exception of an English lady of whom Clementina had never heard, making Lady Bradshaigh come out firmly that "if a little of the Strength of those Expressions had been soften'd, Sr Charles's Character wou'd not have appear'd the worse for it" (FC XI, ff. 62-65). Richardson defensively returned on 14 February 1754 that to praise equally would be to suggest a divided heart. To make "cool Reserves" in his admiration of Clementina would have shown him to be weak—but he admitted that to have a good man reward merit where he found it was a delicate situation, even uncommon (Carroll, p. 283).

In the light of Richardson's unhappiness, it is at least interesting to hear Sir Charles remark in the last volume, almost casually, that he is the happy husband of "the best and most generous of women" (p. 108, F6v), or to watch him being exceptionally cautious about his comparisons between the two rival Queens (pp. 124-125, G2v-G3r): "My Harriet is another Clementina! You are another Harriet! Sister-excellencies I have called you to her, to all her relations. . . . My admiration of her greatness of mind, so similar to that of my own Harriet. . . ." Most important of all, Richardson at least twice makes the ultimate decision about his suffixes: "this dearest and most generous of women", Sir Charles calls Harriet (p. 76, E2v), and "the noblest of all women" confirms the Marquis (p. 182, I7v). I hope Lady Bradshaigh was pleased.

For the lowering of Clementina, Lady Bradshaigh sent a particularly inspired suggestion on 27 November 1753 (FC XI, ff. 41-48). The Italian lady, she wrote, was "certainly well-inclined, her mind is great, but does it not appear chiefly in her narrow zeal. her Enthusiasm?" Richardson seems quickly to have seized on the idea that religious mania, not natural elevation of character, was the cause of Clementina's best actions, for he made Harriet remark, "But could the noble Lady have thus acted . . . had not she been stimulated by that glorious Enthusiasm, of which her disturbed imagination has shewn some previous tokens; and which, rightly directed, has heretofore given the palm of martyrdom to Saints?" (p. 136, G8v). Similar comments appear later (p. 195, K2r; p. 242, M1v). By implication, a Clementina cured would be incapable of greatness, undeserving of public popularity.

Sir Charles's heart must not be divided, argued Lady Bradshaigh in the same letter, because he had said his "whole heart" must be given to the woman he married. Richardson rebuked her for selfishness (Carroll, p. 252), but when she stood firm against "deviding the Conjugal, the tender love of two hearts, united by one Soul" (FC XI, ff. 62-65), a generous apology came by return post (8 February 1754): "Surely I am a very coarse Jester. I would enlarge upon this Subject (of the Preference due to Harriet as the Wife of Sir Charles) But I should ill express myself, if I did, were I not to transcribe your very words on this Subject for near two Pages together" (FC XI, ff. 66-68).

With his late conversion in mind, several passages in the seventh volume are striking. When Clementina comes to England, Sir Charles hastens to assure Harriet, the "absolute mistress" of his heart, of "the continuance of my tenderest Love . . . my unalterable, my inviolable Love to you. . . . I will not leave a doubt upon the mind of any one of [our friends], that my Harriet is not, as far as it is in my power to make her, the happiest of women" (pp. 104-105, F4v-F5r). Whose friends, Sir Charles's or Richardson's?

Indeed, Sir Charles almost protests too much (pp. 81, 108, 114, for example). When Harriet says that to enter on his hand would be to insult Clementina, Sir Charles quickly rebukes her: "My dearest Life! forget not your own dignity . . . nor give me too much consequence with [the] Lady. . . . I glory in my wife: I cannot desert myself" (p. 139, H10r). Harriet's near-miscarriage provides her with a splendid opportunity to gloss his feelings (p. 238), and on the very last sheet of text, she demands congratulations for his "inviolable affection":

"And this blessing [Sir Charles], this joy, your Harriet can call more peculiarly her own!" she cries triumphantly in the penultimate paragraph of the book (p. 299, O6r). Surely she must be reassuring Lady Bradshaigh as well as herself.

One final point concerning the double love. Lady Bradshaigh, on 27 November 1753 (FC XI, ff. 41-48), would not allow Clementina

"one bit of his heart, but what he can bestow in Compassion, gratitude, friendship, Esteem, and the like". These sentiments are carefully copied into the seventh volume (pp. 36, 81); Harriet observes that "The tender friend in her, the beloved wife, were with the nicest propriety, distinguished by him" (p. 256, M8v), and approves the plan for a "little temple" commemorating their triple friendship (p. 288, N12v). Lady Bradshaigh's vocabulary is most elaborately used, though, in the passage about the Wife and Friend, near the end of the book:

Thus the letters of Lady Bradshaigh and others seem to have influenced the defining of Sir Charles's separate affections for the two heroines.

Another contention which may have led to revision concerned Clementina's future. Lady Bradshaigh rejected all suggestions: taking the veil, death, a single life affectionately linked to Sir Charles. Instead, she proposed that, since only Clementina's perverseness, the product of her malady, prevented her from marrying the Count of Belvedere, it should be removed by persuasion and the cessation of opposition. She would be helped towards matrimony by absence from Sir Charles, by his example in marrying first, by the insignificance of a first love being pointed out, by her gratitude to a worthy object who deserved reward for his adoration, by filial duty, and by the probability that her mind would afterwards settle, to the happiness of all. Every one of these arguments Richardson used in the seventh volume to prepare the reader for Clementina's marriage, although opposition from other quarters ultimately prevented its occurrence within the book.

Lady Bradshaigh said sarcastically as late as 5 February 1754 (FC XI, ff. 69-74) that to sequester Clementina from the world in a nunnery would be to "run the hazzard of Making [herself] a useful Member of Society". These very same points are made in the agreement that Clementina draws up with her parents: Article I is a promise not to withdraw from the world, and Article II provides for her immediate control of her estate, "that she may be enabled to do that extensive good with the produce, that she could not do, were she

to renounce the world" (pp. 169-172, I1r-12v). This is repeated several times, most importantly in an episode where Clementina is argued into a final renunciation of the veil (p. 253).

Clementina's fortune was to go to the wicked Laurana if she were professed, so that friends who wanted to see Clementina a nun suggested that Laurana should be killed (Carroll, p. 270). Laurana obligingly commits suicide (p. 275), but since by now Clementina has decided against the veil, her deed may simply have been a concession to vengeful readers.

Some were "for killing the noble Lady herself" (Carroll, p. 270), but Lady Bradshaigh in her letter of 5 February 1754 would allow nothing tragical: "O—dose that Savage live who wou'd kill Either of [the heroines]. He shou'd not, if I cou'd Come at him" (FC XI, ff. 69-74). Remembering her despair when Clarissa died, Richardson must let Clementina live.

Staying single, the third alternative, was attractive, for one of the main issues of the Clarissa debates had been the child's right to a negative. But in the same letter Lady Bradshaigh suggested a dreadful new interpretation of Clementina's intransigeance:

The charge of indelicacy was all the more glaring because of an event in the seventh volume still unknown to Lady Bradshaigh, Clementina's flight to England and to Sir Charles. In the first half of the volume Clementina had blamed herself for a lack of filial duty and for rashness, but in important passages from signature L onwards she is suddenly made aware that her motives could be seen as much culpable. The detested Olivia provides the hint—a clever move, since she could be abused with impunity.

The "severe reflexions" arrive in a letter (p. 225, L5r) that does not appear: Harriet is indignant and Clementina appalled, but the wise Mrs Beaumont makes Lady Bradshaigh's observation that "What Olivia has hinted, the world will hint. It behoves you to consider, that the husband of Lady Grandison ought not to be so much the object of any woman's attention, as to be an obstacle to the address of another

man really worthy" (p. 227). Clementina is convinced, and in Letter 49 she too echoes Lady Bradshaigh:

She complains pointedly that "The world and Olivia will not let me be, in that world, a single woman, and happy".

The awareness of her misdemeanour, she says, "flashed full upon me" (p. 248, M4v)—perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it flashed full upon Richardson. But various excuses are made: Sir Charles ascribes the charge to "ill-will and slander" (p. 249) and Clementina pleads her wounded reason, which "allowed me not to consider, that there were improprieties in my scheme, of which the world would judge otherwise than I did". Olivia's "vile and undeserved reflexions" will be defeated by the true integrity of her heart (p. 254).

The vehemence of these repeated expressions, the use of Olivia as a scapegoat, and the defensive attack on the opinion of the world might together suggest some external influence. But when Lady Bradshaigh's letter is included in the evidence, it is virtually certain that here, not in the novel, is to be found the cause of Clementina's awakening. This is particularly important for confirming a date after 5 February for radical revision of the seventh volume before its printing and publication.

The single life once made impossible for Clementina by Olivia's "vile reflexions", Richardson attacked spinsterhood as such in a discussion (Letter 42, K4r-K9r) between Mrs Shirley and the young girls. (It may well be a study from the life, from Richardson's own domestic circle at North End.) Although the girls sympathise with Clementina, Mrs Shirley discourses on the lonely life of a single and unconnected woman, adding uncharacteristically spiteful touches to Nancy's malicious picture of "a single woman in years". Mrs Selby defends women single through no choice of their own, but the debate opts decisively for prudential marriages and against romantic notions of love that keep one unmarried.

By the luckiest chance, Charlotte has consulted Lady Gertrude, an exemplary spinster who has not, however, written before: "I will fairly own", writes the Sage, "that I think a woman is most likely to find her proper happiness in the married state". But she does reopen some options for Clementina, saying that a fortune by which one might act beneficently, many connexions, or extreme unsuitability make refusal a virtue (pp. 218-219).

The existence of a prior love was, however, a powerful argument against Clementina's marriage, so that Richardson welcomed Mrs Chapone's attack, sent 10 December 1753 (FC XIII, 1, ff. 94-97), on the romantic notion "that it is some degree of unchastity, or however want of Delicacy should they Enter into Covenant with any, Except that very individual, whom they think they could prefer to all the World besides". Richardson, approving, praised Mrs Chapone on 29 December for not allowing her childhood reading to affect her as an adult (Carroll, p. 265).

This exchange appears to have close connections with the love debate just mentioned, for Mrs Shirley's argument is against "romantic" ideas of love, by which she means specific romances read by young women, like the Princess of Cleves, and La Calprènede's Cassandra (she mentions the hero, Oroondates, p. 204). She denies that Harriet would have remained faithful to her "first-sight impressions", just as Charlotte, in Letter 43, also believes that Harriet would have married "before my Brother and Clementina had seen the face of their second boy". She, who once loved a Captain Anderson, can pour ridicule upon the notion of an ineradicable first love, and she is not denied her request to "enumerate a few chances that may render a first Love impracticable". In other words, Clementina need feel no shame in deserting the man she first loved, and in turning to another.

Still ignorant that Clementina had thrown herself into temptation by renewed propinquity with Sir Charles, Lady Bradshaigh had suggested on 5 February 1754 that Clementina would be helped by an absence from him of "one, two, or three years" (FC XI, ff. 69-74). It is therefore not surprising to find Clementina glancing at Emily's example of flight from temptation, and immediately after the "calumny" longing to be in her own country again (p. 226 onwards). Within the month, the Porrettas are gone. Their invitation to the English circle to visit Italy is accepted for a year away. But in his Letter to a Lady, printed by Richardson on 15 March 1754 to answer numerous requests to know what happened to the characters after the book ended (see Appendix of O.E.N. edition), Richardson would use

Harriet's pregnancy as an excuse to prolong the period of separation, until the child was "at least a year old". It seems likely that Richardson adopted Lady Bradshaigh's idea to remove Clementina from Sir Charles, as well as her notion of a helpful lapse in time.

So much for the disentangling of Clementina from Sir Charles. The next step, that of getting her married to the Count of Belvedere, was not so simple. Opposition was strong: Mrs Donnellan had as long ago as November 1752 begged him not to "marry the angel Clementina to the hair-brained Count de Belvidere . . . let not the sweet enthusiast . . . sink into a common woman" (Barbauld IV, 78). John Chapone, son of Mrs Chapone, demanded "Give not an Angel to a mortal man!", declaring roundly that he would rather see her dead (FC XV, 3, ff. 19-22). Richardson had been "very warmly entreated by more than one, two or half a Dozen," he wrote, "that Clementina may not (for the sake of dear Romance) be given to the Count of B.", a number he later enlarged to twenty (Carroll, pp. 270, 290). Miss Mulso and her "Favourites" were among them, and "One Lady assures me, that the Moment she gets the concluding Volume, she will turn to the Fate of Clementina, and if she finds her married, down shall go the Book" (Carroll, p. 272).

Given his belief that he must please in order to instruct, Richardson had to heed such vehemence. Already in the sixth volume he had characteristically side-stepped, saying through Sir Charles that the Porrettas were not wrong in urging her to marry, but in "precipitating" her (Letter 54). Moderating the speed of the compulsion scarcely affected the fact of the compulsion, but it was a line that Richardson would cling to. He explained the advantages of gradual persuasion towards marriage to Lady Bradshaigh on 14 February 1754 (Carroll, pp. 290-291): he could show indulgence combined with parental authority, "without making it necessary to call in an Harlowe violence to oppose their child's inclinations"; he could disappoint Laurana's expectations; the "hasty temper" of the General could be dismissed; the physician had hopes that her malady, being not hereditary, would be cured by marriage; the family's desire to see her united with the worthy Count and cured of her "rambling notions" would be answered; and the Count himself deserved some merit for his perseverance "notwithstanding Some of my Girls will not allow it any". "But", he concluded flatteringly ". . . your judgt. is worth more than that of 20 girls, who too generally are prepossessed with notions of ideal Love, that never can be carried into Practice".

These arguments are curious because they only have weight within

the last volume. At this last moment, the Porretta family is considerably improved, not to appear Harlowesque. Lady Bradshaigh had made the danger clear on 27 November, 1753, when she said that she hated them all, except the Marchioness and Jeronymo (FC XI, ff. 41-48): certainly they were not acting in Clementina's best interests when they threatened her, and let Laurana, her next inheritor, put her in a strait waistcoat. But in the last volume, even the blustering General is the most affectionate of brothers, and Father Marescotti, whose sectarian threats had turned her brain, becomes an amiably innocuous latitudinarian. So radical is the alteration to her family that poor Clementina can only conclude that previously she must have seen her relatives through the eyes of insanity (p. 281, N9r).

The hopes for Clementina's cure likewise only appear in the last volume, and the Count of Belvedere assumes neither prominence nor value until this late stage. There is no need to disappoint Laurana's expectations, since in the last volume she is killed off. No wonder that Richardson was anxious to know if "these Considerations, and others that may be drawn from the Story, are . . . sufficient to render natural the Precipitating Spirit of Clementina's parents" (Carroll, p. 291).

The marriage does not in fact take place; instead, time is allowed Clementina to reflect and to choose. With typical obliquity, though, Richardson propels events towards a near-commitment by Clementina, using methods proposed by Lady Bradshaigh.

For instance, she had said that Clementina was both spoilt and perverse (FC XI, ff. 41-48), a description endorsed by Charlotte and by her brother Giacomo (pp. 215, 275). She was, after all, mad, said Lady Bradshaigh, so that when Clementina accuses herself of irrationality in her flight to England, may she not be mad in everything? Opposition engendered opposition, she argues, and several times in the last volume we are assured that Clementina's resistance will diminish when she is humoured (e.g. p. 215). A tale of a "heroic" girl tricked into marriage by her guardian's pretence to oppose the match (pp. 215-217) points the moral, and with all trace of Harlowe erased from the Porretta features, Clementina has no cause to deny the family's wishes, unless her mind is irrationally determined.

Lady Bradshaigh on 11 December 1753 (FC XI, ff. 54-57) anticipated "all the approaching, and hoped for happiness of Clementina". The Count of Belvedere would be the man, and from gratitude she would give him her hand "with the remainder of her heart". The way is certainly cleared for Clementina to marry the Count, and one passage

in particular discusses gratitude as the motive for marriage. It brings upon itself the suspicion of being a late insertion because it purports to be a recollected quotation from a letter of Lady D. to Harriet: yet no such passage appears in the only letter that Lady D. writes in the book (V, Letter 18). The advice is ostensibly addressed to Harriet, but it applies perfectly to Clementina, being an elaboration of Lady Bradshaigh's hint (p. 219, L2r).

Gratitude, then, would draw Clementina to the Count, as well as "Time, and assiduities, from a worthy object" approved by everyone, said Lady Bradshaigh on 5 February 1754 (FC XI, ff. 69-74). It is certainly striking to see in the last volume the Count brought forth to play off, as she suggested, "his artillery of adoration, vows, tenderness, love-gentle, love violent, and Every assiduity that is likely to gain her affection". Until now he has been less than a secondary character, but suddenly he is the centre of attention for Harriet, Sir Charles, the Porretta family and their attendants. Praise and pity are showered upon him, he prostrates himself adoringly at his mistress's feet, and Clementina herself has to admit his worth.

Final "proofs" of his worthiness appear in his benevolence and utter devotion, so that even Harriet, a previous supporter of Clementina, asks, "Shall I wish the noble Clementina may be prevailed upon in favour of this really worthy man? Should I, do you think, be prevailed upon in her situation?—A better question still—Ought I?" (pp. 239-240). But this question has already been answered by Mrs Shirley, that goddess of wisdom: she cannot agree with the hardship of Clementina's situation, in which she was "from reasons of family convenience, and even of personal happiness, urged to marry a nobleman, who, by all accounts, is highly deserving and agreeable, and every-way suitable to her: A man, in short, to whom she pretended not an aversion" (VII, Letter 42).

The Count and Clementina part, but the scene closes with the words of Lady Bradshaigh: Sir Charles makes him promise that he will "make his court to her only by silent assiduities, and by those actions of beneficence and generosity which were so natural to him, and so worthy of his splendid fortune" (p. 294).

Two last suggestions remained for the complete happiness of all. First, Lady Bradshaigh wanted to see Clementina restored to "Tranquility" (FC XI, ff. 41-48)—all the more acceptable to Richardson because she had also remarked that Clementina's chief charm lay in her madness. Hopes of a cure appear in the last volume from Mr Lowther, the surgeon, who has fortuitously gained the supporting

"opinions of the most noted London physicians" (p. 257, M9r). He expresses surprise, as well he may, that Clementina's merely circumstantial insanity had been a cause of her not marrying Sir Charles, and he predicts that marriage will make both her family and herself happy. Sir Charles also anticipates tranquillity and happiness for all (p. 242, M1v), and Harriet remarks complacently that "Every thing that can be adjusted, is. . . . How joyfully do we all, in prospect, see a durable tranquillity taking possession of her noble heart! The Marquis and the Marchioness have not one care written on their heretofore visibly anxious brows" (p. 289, O1r).

Second, Clementina could copy the example of Sir Charles, who, wrote Lady Bradshaigh on 5 February 1754, had "hasten'd to Marry, upon [her] request, and for [her] Satisfaction" (FC XI, ff. 69-74). And so we find Sir Charles coolly informing Harriet in the last volume that the Porrettas' urging him to give the example of marriage to Clementina had been "the occasion . . . of accelerating my declaration to you" (p. 81, E5r).

The marriage, as I said, does not take place, but everything points to a union at a later date. Attacked on all sides, Richardson wished on 14 February 1754 that he had received sooner Lady Bradshaigh's "reasonings in favour of the Count of Belvedere" (Carroll, p. 291). All that he dared offer in the work are the opinions of the characters: Charlotte thinks she will be married "a year or two hence" (p. 215, K12r); and the Bishop has no doubt that Clementina will "now complete her triumph" by acquiescence in filial duty, foreseeing "happy prospects" (p. 284, N10v).

For the sake of the morality and for Lady Bradshaigh's pleasure, Richardson would have preferred, I think, to marry off Clementina by the end of the book. But his own affection for her, risen upon him beyond the expectation of both Sir Charles and the reader (Carroll, p. 252), the first conception of the character as persecuted which Mrs Delany had offered in 1751 from her own life (Carroll, p. 24), and the certainty that this match would be unpopular, these together forced him to compromise. "Every thing", to echo Harriet, "that can be adjusted, is", but Richardson's postponement of the decision to a time outside the work must be compared with his steady refusal to compromise on the fate of Clarissa.

Lady Bradshaigh, at least, saw after publication of the seventh volume what had been done for her, writing on 22 March 1754, "I Cou'd not have imagined, you Cou'd possibly have done so much in one volme and am much better satisfied than I expected" (FC XI, ff.

90-95). She had little reason to kick and flounce and be ungovernable when she saw how often Richardson had deferred to her. Samuel Johnson, less naive, saw exactly how Richardson had managed it, observing in him on 28 March 1754 "a trick of laying yourself open to objections, in the first part of your work, and crushing them in subsequent parts. A great deal that I had to say before I read the conversation in the latter part, is now taken from me" (The Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman, 1952, Letter 51.1).

There are two final oddities in the seventh volume, the Concluding Note from the Editor and the "unlucky omission", both of which the surprised reader of the first edition found ahead of him after the story was done. If the fable part of Volume VII was the last chance to forestall criticism, the gloss in the Concluding Note provides a very last chance. In it Richardson discusses three issues: Sir Charles's promise to bring up as Catholics any girls he might have by Clementina; the impossibility of copying anyone so perfect as Sir Charles; and his suspicious facility in duels. All these had been complained of by correspondents, the first by Mrs Donnellan (Autobiography, III, 1st series, p. 256) and Mrs Chapone (FC XIII, 1, ff. 96-97), the second by Mrs Chapone (ibid.), the third by Lady Bradshaigh (FC XI, ff. 41-48, 54-57) and others (e.g. Dr Will Webster, FC XV, 3, f. 18). For the last issue Lady Bradshaigh had offered a model defence, upon which Richardson based his own argument—including a suggestion that patterns of Christian behaviour were to be found in the sermons of Bishop Tillotson (a quotation from him ends the Note) and a statement that separates out the private and questionable aspects of Sir Charles's behaviour in loving two women at once from the public and imitable. That is, Richardson was answering specific and individual comments in the Concluding Note, and to some extent basing his reply on the letters of his friends.

At least this response was honestly declared, even if still behind the "umbrage of the editor's character", as he once put it (Carroll, p. 42), but the "unlucky omission" is, I think, entirely fraudulent. It purports to be a piece of text mistakenly left out, and thus of necessity slipped between the hundred-page Index and the Address to the Public (itself a bitter charge of fraud hurled at the pirates). In the first place, it is unlikely that Richardson's able and accurate men would have overlooked a page and a half of manuscript, and in any case the last sentence has had to be altered to weave it into the context: "His new-taken house in Grosvenor-square . . ." becomes "Whither have I rambled! I was going to tell you, that if this Italian family comes over, his newtaken house, &c."

Second, it corresponds too closely to two letters, one of 11 December 1753 from Lady Bradshaigh and another received from an anonymous writer on about 26 December 1753 (FC XI, ff. 54-57; XV, 3, f. 32), to be part of the original manuscript. Lady Bradshaigh had begged "pray Sir let Sr Chas declare, that Hart is indisputably the more desireable woman, for a wife to an English man, and a protestant". In the "omission" we find Lucy Selby asking, "How could Sir Charles, so thorough an Englishman, have been happy with an Italian wife?" And she "recollects nearly his Words" (a suspicious circumstance itself, in a work written "to the moment") strongly defending his patriotic and protestant principles.

The terrified anonymous, as Richardson called him in his own index to the correspondence, had similar chauvinist fears, and just how seriously Richardson took this criticism may be seen by his careful answering in the "omission" of attacks made on Sir Charles's disloyalty, dangerous fondness for papists, and preference for foreign goods and services:

Poor Lady G., always the scapegoat. But Richardson's little deceit has serious consequences, for the principal advantage of the epistolary method is its immediacy, and to have Lucy "remember" and "recollect

nearly his Words" undermines the consistency and realism of the whole.

This study has been then an account of the peculiar way that one volume of Richardson's work came to be as it is, an unravelling, so far as is possible, of just "how much advantage, in my proud heart, is given me, of peeping into the hearts of my readers, and sometimes into their heads, by their approbation, and disapprobation, of the conduct of the different persons in my Drama" (Carroll, p. 289). It also tells us much about the man's habits of mind, his readiness to compromise small aesthetic points for the sake of a larger moral whole. And it reveals his hopes for an absolute communication with his readers: Fielding's similar concern for the "corrupting and corruptible" word (Glen W. Hatfield, Henry Fielding and the Language of Irony, 1968, p. 4) was itself part of a contemporary desire to link purity of meaning and purity of morals.

There are two further implications to be drawn. Richardson wrote at a time critical for the transference of literary patronage from a small group to a vast and amorphous reading public, of which "nine parts in ten" were in hanging-sleeves, that is, young (Carroll, p. 42). He wanted to reach the masses, using the forms of popular prose to attract them, but despaired at the same time of his "Accommodation" to a wicked world (Carroll, p. 117). Longing to be considered a serious writer, he sought the approbation of reasonable people, the educated élite who could recognise the loveliness of truth naked, and agree with him about it. By energetically sending proofs or complimentary copies to friends and literary figures he tried to enlist a community of understanding worthies for his book, but even they saw different draperies.

It is an illuminating contrast to recall that Fielding, grateful recipient of "princely benefactions" from the Duke of Bedford and the Hon. George Lyttleton, read aloud from the manuscript of Tom Jones a few weeks before it was published to just such a group of reasonable men as Richardson yearned for, the elder Pitt, Lyttleton and George Fielding, at the house of an educated squire, Sanderson Miller. Ralph Allen, Fielding's frequent host at Prior Park during the composition of Tom Jones, must have been similarly favoured (Wilbur L. Cross, The History of Henry Fielding, 1963, II, 112-113). He asked for comment on the final revision, but there seems to have been no disagreement, only the warm commendation he speaks of in the Preface.

Such happy uniformity of response was not granted to Richardson. A man of independent means, he neither sought nor received patronage of the old financial kind (Eaves and Kimpel, pp. 35-36;

Carroll, pp. 174-175). But he would dearly have loved approbation of the civil kind offered to Fielding, and was deeply hurt when his new patrons, the voluble, fickle, opinionated readers, did not behave as the old would have done. Both he and his creation, Grandison, were affected by the change.

The second point is shown by the shift in sense of "sentimental". It may be precisely dated, because Lady Bradshaigh asked Richardson in 1749, just when he was embarking on Grandison, "What, in your opinion, is the meaning of the word sentimental, so much in vogue among the polite. . . ." (Barbauld, IV, 282; in OED as the first example of the usage). Richardson had built his work around a "sentimental design", that is, around a set of maxims, cautions and sententiae animated by particulars. The construction of Grandison was thus originally intellectual, a work of reason. But Richardson's wayward readers chose to relish for their own sakes the very particulars, those "Nugatories of Girls and Boys" (Carroll, p. 195), that he used as a means to the end of communicating general truths, and in so doing, agitated themselves in a manner that would rapidly be known as sentimental in its new sense. Instead of the intuitive head corroborating and controlling the passions of the heart, rule passed, with this change in meaning, to the blind, unreasoning heart. With the semantic change from the old to the new, with the alteration of literary patronage from an élite to the masses, Richardson's distressed and distressing compromises in Volume VII of Grandison became inevitable.

Notes