The Greatest English Novelist: On the Occasion of the Bicentenary of Clarissa, 1748

r ·• I. - • I THE GREATEST ENGLISH NOVELIST · (On the Occasio~ of thiBicent~ary oj.Clariss:a} /118) A. E. CARTER - )- . RICHARDSON is t_he greatest .English novelist,- a_nd the least read. The first part of that statement may arouse some surprise, but few_· people.~ill disagree with the second. To the common reader, as he wanders vaguely 1n the stacks in search of some likely voiume with which to pass the week-end, the substantial tomes of Richardson are a terrifying appantton . The WQrks of Samuel Richardson: the expanse of gilded leather occupies half a shelf. Is it a collection of novels or an encyclopaedia? The common reader is disconcerted. l-ie sees three titles only, and Pamela, he notes, runs to four volumes, Clarissa to eight) Grandison to six. If he p:ulls one out, he finds th';l-t it is written in the form of letters. And what letters! : As long, many of them, as an average short story. The letter form is littlefavol }_req nowadays,: even when the· letters are short, even when -there is only ~ne volume of_ them. · The common reader:_ puts the book back with a shudder. And unless1 at some later d~te, he comes across apassing reference to Richardson in a voJume of literary history, that is his first and last encounter.,with the author of Clarissa. ·- _Anyone who attempts to minimize Ric-hardson's defects is on dangerou~ · ground; they are much too obvious to be ignored. His constant moralizing is very t:l"resome, and his incredible prolixity swamps ~he design of .all his _ books exc~pt Clarissa, ,and eveh there disaster is only Just avoided. ~or are such shortcomings accidental. They were inherent in his conception .: of the novel. Richardson's first publ1cation was a guide to let~er-writing~ Familiar Letters on lmpm·tant Occasions. Besides its practical use, this book had a .moral purpose. "Th~ following letters," says Ric-hardson in the Preface; "are published ... to mend the heart and improve the understanding ."1. He never went beyond this idea; he only elaborated it, first in Pamela, later in Clarissa and Grandison. To mend the heart and improve the understanding wa-s the principal end he h~d in view; and this preoccupation led him into some of the most unpleasant errors that have ever plagued a major novelist. It would b~ difficult to-imagine-. a l!lore 'funda:-mentally false morality than the argument of Pamela and"'Grandison. Pamela's modesty and .Sir Charles' greatness of soul are amongst the out- .standing c4eats of literature; and .we can see the source of a whole school of bathos in Clarissa's defiance of Lovelace when she __holds a knife to her bosom1 or in Miss Byron,s struggles with the wicked Sir Hargrave ·Pollexfen. In addition·, Richardson's books contain an unpleasant sort of pruriency, :the sort of p-ruriency which seems inseparable from an undue insistance.on physical chastity. The worst examples are probably in Pamela, where the· 1The italics arc Richardson's own. Familiar Le!Jers on-Imponant Occasions (London, · ._1928),· xxvii. 390 THE GREATEST ENGLTSH NOVELIST. . 391 scenes of. ·Mr. B.'s attempts and finally_of Pamela's wedding night are as suggestive as-anything else in eighteenth-century literature.~ Besides the light they shed on his moral p_reoccupations, ;the Familiar Leller.s give us an interesting glimpse of.- Richardson;s technique" He. begins· his characters as types-'-the roue, the young worn an .out at service; the bawd1 the incensed father-and develops them by means.of situations, each situation supplying the materials for a letter. It was.no accident that ,h~ .found the-seeds of his three novels in his catalogue of epistolary models.· Each novel bears the traces of its common conception as a didactic letter: ' type characters~· development by situations, and moral pu.rpose; and all 'three books are filled with episodes which detach themselves from the plot - and serve as excuses for a moral dissertation. What to the .average.novelist is a Jcene afairc or an exposition, .is to Richardson an excuse for a letter. · Has a young woman been deserted by her lover? She will write him...