[Taken from real and fictional epistolary narratives, these selections highlight two of the ways that people of color influenced British society. In three of these letters, people of color are called “prints,” “shadows,” and ‘Mongrels’—pejoratives that, collectively, embody their marginal status as negative reproductions— inferior byproducts of unions between original black and white people. These letter writers depend on such ‘negative reproductions’ for developing and refining British standards of beauty, class, and culture. Wesley, on the other hand, is decidedly more positive in his consideration of the “poor African” even though his letter was written at a time when reports of a slave rebellion in Dominica were alarming Britons and turning them against the idea of abolition. Wesley would die a mere eight days after he wrote to Wilberforce. But his letter is a potent reminder to the statesman of the religious, national and human villainy that slavery engenders—an image that surely stayed with Wilberforce even after he unsuccessfully argued for the abolition of the slave trade in Parliament in April 1791. Altogether, the people of color represented on the margins of British epistolary narratives certainly play a central role in establishing the criteria by which eighteenth-century Britons came to understand their own national identifications with ‘Britishness,’ morality, and ‘whiteness.’]
1. From Richard Griffith, The Gordian Knot: or, Dignus
Vindice Nodus. A Novel. In Letters (Dublin: P. Wilson,
J. Exshaw, H. Saunders, W. Sleater, D. Chaberline, J.
Potts, J. Hoey, and J. Williams, 1769) Vol. IV, Part II,
Letter LXXIX, 44
Sir Thomas Medway, To Mr. Sutton.
Windsor.
I have returned hither, because I would be at home, and now there is no other spot in England, where I feel I have any manner of connection...
But to return to Windsor.—Philosophers say, falsely, that beauty is arbitrary; that use, custom, or habit, alone, establishes its empire. I shall leave them to argue it, in architecture, or all the
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rest of the arts and sciences; but with regard, to the human face divine, the Europeans must certainly bear the belle, against all the negro nations, under the sun.
For, not to insist on the preference of a white skin, before a black one, which may be but an arbitrary idea, yet surely the difference of colours, in the blueness of the veins, the suffusion of the cheeks, with the contrast of the hair, must afford a more pleasing variety to the eye, than mere black and white can possibly do. We are pictures, they but prints.
2. From Hester Thrale, “Letter To Mrs. Pennington,” No.
5 George St., Manchester Square, Saturday, June 19, 1802 , in The Letters of Mrs. Thrale, selected with an introduction by R. Brimley Johnson (London: John Lane the Bodley Head Ltd., 1926) 143
Well! I am really haunted by black shadows. Men of colour in the rank of gentlemen; a black Lady cover’d with finery, in the Pit at the Opera, and tawny children playing in the squares,—the gardens of the Squares I mean,—with their Nurses, afford ample proofs of Hannah More and Mr. Wilberforce’s 1 success towards breaking down the wall of separation. Oh! how it falls on every side! and spreads its tumbling ruins on the world! Leaving all ranks, all customs, all colours, all religions jumbled together, till like the old craters of an exhausted volcano, Time closes and covers with fallacious green each ancient breach of distinction; preparing us for the moment when we shall be made one fold under one Shepherd, 2 fulfilling the voice of prophecy.
3. From Clara Reeve, Plans of Education with remarks on the system of other writers. In a series of Letters between Mrs. Darnford and her friends (London: T. Hookham and J. Carpenter, 1792) 89-93, 96
LETTER XI.
LADY A—TO MRS. DARNFORD.
Do not be angry with me, my dear Mrs. Darnford!—It is so natural to communicate our pleasures to those we love best, that I could not forbear shewing your letters to Lord A—. He was surprised to find you so deep in knowledge of a national kind, and pleased to see you entering so warmly into the best interests of mankind. He is pleased that you have defended a due subordination of rank, and that you do not wish the boundaries thrown down, and all men put upon a level; because he thinks, that in their different degrees and occupations men are most useful to each other, and that the result is the harmony of the whole.
My lord says, he can strengthen your arguments against the emancipation of the negroes, by two considerations; the first is, the present consequences; the second, the future. The first seems to be already coming forward; namely, that the negroes, being apprized of the steps that have been taken here in their favour, are preparing to rise against their masters, and to cut their throats. We have heard of very late rebellions, that have, with difficulty, been crushed, and we may expect to hear of more daily.
The second consequence to be expected is, that when the great point shall be carried for them, they will flock hither from all parts, mix with the natives, and spoil the breed of the common people. There cannot be a greater degradation than this, of which there are too many proofs already in many towns and villages.
The gradations from a negro to a white are many: first, a black and a white produce a mulatto; secondly, a mulatto with a white produce a mestee; thirdly, a mestee and a white produce a quadroon, a dark yellow; the quadroon and a white, a sallow kind of white, with the negro shade, and sometimes the features All
• 4
these together produce a vile mongrel race of people, such as no * friend to Britain can ever wish to inhabit it.
These considerations should be recommended to the patrons
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of the Black Bill of Rights; 1 perhaps they may not have reflected upon these points, and the mischiefs they contain.
The king of the French, when he was king of France, banished all the negroes from his country; 2 it would be wise to do so in Britain, while it is yet in our power.
You are to understand this reasoning to proceed from my lord; who says farther, that he has no doubt to call the negroes an inferior race of men, but still a link of the universal chain, and, as men, entitled to humanity, to kindness, and to protection; and he thinks, their masters ought to be amenable to the laws, if they overwork, or otherwise ill-treat them.
If we have known an Ignatius Sancho, and a Phillis Wheatly, 3 they are exceptions to the general rules of judgment, and may be compared with a Bacon and a Milton, 4 among the most civilised and refined of the race of Europeans.
Thus much is for my lord, and as a return for your thoughts, which you have communicated to us. For myself, I have travelled
with you through all your gradations to the bottom of the valley; and shall be happy to climb up again with you; for I perceive you mean to ascend by the same gradation, and to give us your Plan of Education for each, as you go along...
LETTER XII
/
Mrs. Darnford to Lady A—.
Indeed, madam, I owe you no thanks for shewing my letters to my Lord A—.You expect me to be sincere; I did not intend them for his inspection: but his remarks are very just, and his arguments strengthen mine....
4. John Wesley, “Letter to William Wilberforce,” Balam, February 24, 1791
Dear Sir:
Unless the divine power has raised you up to be as Athanasius contra mundum , ! I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be fore you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.
Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African , * 1 2 I was particularly struck by that circumstance that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a “law” in our colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this?
That he who has guided you from youth up may continue to strengthen you in this and all things, is the prayer of, dear sir, Your affectionate servant,
John Wesley