Contents
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 Contents
The
author The
book The
artist and the engraver Sir
Charles Grandison rescues Miss Byron Sir
Charles Grandison and his daughters Sir
Charles Grandison reconciles Sir Harry and Lady Beauchamp Clemantina
and her family Coming
home to Grandison Hall
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.
IN
a world which boasts, or laments, that "of making books there is
no end", every year necessarily adds to our store of
imperishable literary treasures. Every year, therefore,
increases the number of books which deserve to be read and
multiplied, and for those whose lives cannot be passed in a
library, the difficulty of becoming acquainted with as much of the
literature of even their own country as claims to be immortal becomes
annually greater. Even our own young generation, in the struggle and
fever of life, find that time fails for making acquaintance with the
heroes and heroines dear to the hearts of their predecessors. And
perhaps one of the first of our classic authors to be thrust aside is
that leisurely and voluble author who delighted our grandmothers with
portraits of "the best of men", and our grandfathers with
delineations of the "most excellent of women".
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
OF
all Richardson's books, Grandison is perhaps the most conspicuously
unknown. Clarissa Harlowe, shortened, has been kept, by its strong
incidents, among the books which are familiar; and Pamela is
doubtless looked into on account of the fame of the literary retort
which it provoked. But The History of Sir Charles Grandison must be
taken according to the author's own intention, or not at all.
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.
ISAAC
Taylor, Stothard's competitor in the illustration of Grandison,
was one of many artists who, in the course of the history of design,
have entered the studio by way of the silversmith's workshop — a way
approved by Mr Ruskin. He was born in 1730, and was the son of a
provincial brass founder, and in this business did his first engraved
work on metal. But some change of conditions sent him in his youth,
on foot, to London, destitute and quite alone. He was lucky in
finding immediate employment with a silversmith, was industrious,
prospered, and married. By degrees he began to produce engravings
for the Gentleman's Magazine, which, with its peculiarly dismal
plates, seems to have been a kind of nursery for young reputations in
its day. Other magazines employed his graver, and he was encouraged
to begin design, so that we find him in 1766-70 engraving and
exhibiting his book illustrations.
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.”
MISS Byron
writes out to her chief correspondent, Lucy, the account given
to her by Sir Charles's sisters of their early sufferings from their
father's cruelty. The meek Caroline had accepted the blameless
addresses of Lord L, and the spirited Charlotte had abetted her. Sir
Thomas, for no particular reason, except that he was a rake, and
therefore unjust and suspicious, had resolved to make the path of
true love as rough as possible. He had summoned the damsels from
their weeping upstairs to attend him at dinner (their "heads"
announce full dress), and to be bullied afterwards in the drawing
room. The scene is told at immense length.
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."
*
*
* *
* *
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.
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