The woman of colour : a tale

  1. The woman of colour : a tale
  2. The Woman of Colour A Tale
  3. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR
  4. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR A Tale
  5. A Chronology of Women of Color in Drama and Long Prose Fiction
  6. A Note on the Text
  7. IN CONTINUATION
  8. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR VOLUME II
  9. PACKET THE FOURTH
  10. PACKET THE FIFTH OLIVIA FAIRFIELD TO MRS. MILBANKE
  11. FINIS
  12. Appendix B: Anonymous Poem “written by a Mulatto Woman” (1794)
  13. Appendix C: Minor Heiresses of Color in British Long Prose Fiction
  14. 5. From Mrs. Charles Mathews, Memoirs of a Scots
  15. Heiress, vol. II (London: T. Hookham, 1791) 182-97
  16. Appendix D: Historical and Social Accounts of People of Color in Jamaica
  17. Appendix E: People of Color in British Epistolary Narratives
  18. Appendix F: The Woman of Colour: Contemporary Reviews
  19. Appendix G:Jamaican Petitions, Votes of the Assembly, and an Englishman’s Will
  20. Select Bibliography
  21. 164 0579827 7

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  46. 1 Felicity Nussbaum’s Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003) offers the most recent analysis of the influence of black women and men from this period. Nussbaum’s book is preceded and complimented by other important examinations of race and gender both inside and outside eighteenth century studies, notably Roxann Wheeler’s The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth-Century British Culture (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2000), Kim Hall’s Things of Darkness : Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995), Jennifer Devere Brody’s Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity andVictonan Culture (Durham: Duke UP, 1998), and Dwight A. McBride’s Impossible Witnesses: Truth, Abolition and Slave Testimony (NewYork: NYU Press, 2001).
  47. • 2 Joyce Green Macdonald, “The Disappearing African Woman: Imoinda in Oroonoko After Behn” English Literary History 66 (1999) 76. Macdonald’s charge has since been countered by Joseph M. Ortiz who claims “Imoinda’s vagueness is strategic” in “Arms and the Woman: Narrative, Imperialism and Virgilian Memoria in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko,” Studies in the Novel 34 (2002) 121.
  48. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 11
  49. 1 Ortiz agrees with this assessment and his essay is an attempt to re-establish “the centrality of the figure of Imoinda (who, to some extent, has also been confined to the margins of critical attention).” Ibid. 121.
  50. 2 “Reading What Isn’t There: ‘Black’ Studies in Early Modern EnglandC Stanford Humanities Review 3 (1993) 23-33.
  51. 3 Ibid. 30.
  52. 4 Lynda E. Boose, ‘“The Getting of a Lawful Race’: Racial discourse in early modern England and the unrepresentable black woman,” Chapter 2 of Women, “Race” & Writing in the Early Modern Period, ed. Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker (London: Routledge, 1994) 46.
  53. 12 INTRODUCTION
  54. 1 See Macdonald’s “Disappearing African Woman” and Nussbaum’s “Black Women: Why Imoinda Turns White” (Limits of the Human, Chapter 6) for more discussion of Imoinda’s change from a black to a white woman. I consider Imoinda’s pregnancy nominal because none of the frontispieces or stage directions to Oroonoko plays present the “big” (with child) body that Behn describes in her novella.
  55. 2 John Hawkesworth (1759), Francis Gentleman (1760), John Ferriar (1786), and an anonymous author (1760) all wrote versions of Oroonoko with white Imoindas.
  56. 3 Macdonald, “The Disappearing African Woman,” ELH 66, 81-82.
  57. 4 Srinivas Aravamudan writes that, “Southerne’s Imoinda, though white, still possesses some ‘ethnic’ qualities carried over from Behn’s novella, making her an ‘Indian’ and a ‘Heathen’.” See Tropicopolitans (Durham and London: Duke UP, 2000) 57. Curiously, he does not consider the African origin of these ‘ethnic qualities’ despite the West African roots of Behn’s original heroine. I contend that the ethnic qualities carried over from Behn’s novella to Southerne’s play are all mere signifiers of the original heroine’s geographic connection to Africa.
  58. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 13
  59. 1 This poem confirms that Imoinda’s white “complexion” was used to sanitize what this observer saw as a salacious character which Henry Neville’s Isle of Pines (1668) had already connected to a black woman: “Soft Imoinda’s tender Air despise; / Beware the force of her designing Eyes: / She sells her Vertue, and complexion buys. / Who thinks her chaste, perchance may be mistook, / Her innocence is only in her look.” “Against the Luxury of the Town in Eating and Drinking. A Satyr,” in Reflections, Moral, Comical, Satyrical, &c. on the Vices and Folies of the Age (London: Printed 1707) 7-8.
  60. 2 Claire de Duras, Ourika, an English Translation by John Fowles (New York: MLA, 1994) 10. In the “Introduction” to this edition, Joan Dejean notes that there were four dramatic versions of Ourika within a few years of the original text (viii).
  61. 3 Women were enthusiastic about both texts. See Oroonoko, ed. Maximillian E. Novak and David Stuart Rodes (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1976). My ideas build on Novak and Rodes’ assumption that South- ** erne’s skill at “pathetic tragedy” made Oroonoko “attractive to the ladies in the audience” (xvi). I suggest that Southerne’s manipulation of the racial and sexual dynamics that Behn’s text establishes has as much to do with the reasons why Oroonoko came to be known as “the Favourite of the Ladies” (xvi).
  62. 14 INTRODUCTION
  63. 1 Nussbaum, Limits of the Human, 188.
  64. 2 Further examples of the way people of color influence the British psyche can be found in Appendix E.
  65. . 3 For discussions of black people in Britain, see Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (New Jersey: Highlands Press, 1984); Folarin Shyllon, Black People in Britain (London; New York: Oxford UP, 1977); Norma Myers, Reconstructing the Black British Past 1780-1830 (London; Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1996); Gretchen Gerzina, Black London: Life Before Emancipation (Rutgers: Rutgers UP, 1995).
  66. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 15
  67. 1 Concerning the Mansfield Judgement, it is worth pointing out that, “All Mansfield said was that a master could not by force compel a slave to go out of England. Black slavery still existed there. Long after the Somersett case advertisements for the sale of black slaves continued to appear in English newspapers.” Staying Power, 125-26.
  68. 2 Published in 1787, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species was “Humbly Submitted to the Inhabitants of Great Britain by Ottobah Cugoano, a Native* of Africa.” For more about Cugoano and his work see Vincent Carretta’s introduction to Thoughts and Sentiments (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1999).
  69. 3 Moira Ferguson Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery 1670-1834 (London and New York: Routledge, 1992) 4.
  70. 16 INTRODUCTION
  71. 1 See Fryer, Staying Power , 75-77; Nussbaum, Limits of the Human, 16269; and Gerzina, Black London, 68-89 for discussions of these and other eighteenth-century black women in England. Pierce Egan’s Life in London, or Days and Nights of Jerry Hawthorne and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1904) p. 227, contains the print of the dancing black woman. For Sylvia Woodcock (a mulatto East Indian) see The British Tribunal for 1789. Containing the Most Remarkable Trials for Street and Highway Robberies, Murder etc. from the Notes of a Student who Attends the Different Judicial Courts (London: J.S. Barr, 1790). For Dido Elizabeth Belle see Gene Adams, “A Black Girl at Kenwood; An Account of the Protegee of the First Lord Mansfield,” Camden History Review 12 (1984) 10-14.
  72. 2 Ziggi Alexander “Let it lie Upon the table: The Status of Black Women’s Biography in the UK,” Gender and History 2 (1990) 24.
  73. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 17
  74. 1 Ibid.
  75. 2 Ibid. 23. *
  76. 3 Ibid. 29.
  77. 4 It is important to note that women of color who are not racially conscious appear in British literature well before 1808. My thanks to Laura J. Rosenthal for bringing to my attention the Genuine Memoirs of the Late Celebrated Jane D****s (1761), a text which provides a brief sketch of
  78. 18 INTRODUCTION
  79. the eponymous heroine’s black father and white mother but makes no further use or mention of her race. Jane and Mrs. Llwhuddwhydd from The Dramatic History of Master Edward, Miss Ann, Mrs. Llwhuddwhydd and Others. The Extraordinaries of These Times. Collected from Zaphaniel’s Original Papers (1743) are, thus, examples of the fact that women of color have long been a presence in eighteenth-century British literature, in texts where their racial identities have been signified but never expounded upon with the sustained force that we find in The Woman of Colour.
  80. 1 To my knowledge, E.M. McClelland was the first to, briefly, bring the novel to the attention of contemporary critics in Comparative Studies in Society & History 9 (1967) 355-56. Thereafter, Impossible Purities, Chapter 1 discusses it. Further efforts to increase awareness about it are crucial, since Felicity Nussbaum notes that “there are very few accounts of black women traveling from the East or West Indies, Africa or the South Pacific, real or imagined, to eighteenth century England” {Limits, 162). Additionally, Sara Salih believes that “Mary Prince’s History is the first narrative of the life of a black woman to be published in England” (London: Penguin, 2000), vii; while Joan Dejean states that Ourika is “the first black heroine in a novel set in Europe” {Ourika, xi). Obviously, claims such as these need to be re-evaluated in light of The Woman of Colour.
  81. 2 See Appendix F.
  82. 3 Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, ed. Claudia Johnson (New York: Norton, 1998) xi.
  83. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 19
  84. 1 Peter Garside and his team of research associates state that, “8 out of 19 possible Circulating Libraries and 1 out of 5 possible Subscription Libraries” list The Woman of Colour in catalogues that they consulted which range geographically from London to Dublin between 1814 and 1834 (P. D. Garside, J. E. Belanger, and S. A. Ragaz, British Fiction, 1800-1829: A Database of Production, Circulation & Reception, designer A. A. Mandal <http://www.british-fiction.cf.ac.uk> [May 24 2006]: DBF Record No. 1808A019/Libraries).
  85. 2 A year-by-year chart outlining this information can be found in The English Novel, 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles. Vol. II 1800-1829, eds. Peter Garside, James Raven, and Rainer Schowerling (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000), 73.
  86. 3 Ibid. 49-63 provides a helpful discussion about the importance of titl&k during this period.
  87. 4 For more on the abolition debates see Substance of the Debates on a Resolution for Abolishing the Slave Trade (London: Dawson’s, 1968).
  88. 5 Both the publishers and the printer of The Woman of Colour were experienced in the book trade but relatively new commercial entities. Trade
  89. 20 INTRODUCTION
  90. records indicate that Samuel Hamilton filed for bankruptcy in 1803 but opened a new press in Surrey in 1808. Booksellers Black and Parry added Kingsbury to the business in 1807 and traded under this arrangement until 1812.
  91. 1 Writing about Santo Domingo, Thomas Clarkson uses the term ‘People of Colour’ to include “Free Negroes, and all such as have the smallest mixture of negro-blood; many of whom are as white as any of the native West Indians” (The True State of the Case Respecting the Insurrection at St. Domingo (Ipswich: Printed by J. Bush, 1792) 4. However, the Jamaican historian, Bryan Edwards, excludes free Negroes in his definition of the term, limiting it exclusively to “people of mixed complexion” (see Appendix D). Politically, Olivia embodies more of Clarkson’s view of the term than Edwards’ since she is a mixed-race Jamaican woman who, as I will show, advocates for the freedom of black people of all colors.
  92. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 21
  93. 1 Edward Long, The History of Jamaica. Or, General Survey of the Antient and Modern State of That Island: with Reflections on its Situation, Settlements, Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws, and Government. In Three Volumes (London: T. Lowndes, 1774) Vol. II. II. xiii. 261.
  94. 2 Ibid., 262.
  95. 3 The Fortunate Transport, or The Secret History of the life and adventures of the celebrated Polly Haycock, the lady of the gold watch. By a Creole * (London. Printed for T. Taylor, 1748) 43.
  96. 4 History of Jamaica, II.xiii.262.
  97. 5 Lucy Peacock, “The Creole,” taken from The Rambles of Fancy; or, Moral and Interesting Tales (London: Printed by T. Bensley, for the Author,
  98. 1786) 112. See Appendix A for the full text.
  99. 6 The Creole, or The Haunted Island (London: C. Whittingham, 1796) 2.
  100. 22 INTRODUCTION
  101. 1 See her essay “Janet Schaw and the Complexions of Empire,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36 (2003). Also see Appendix Cl for Musgrave’s description of the manner in which the “distinction” between “creole young ladies” and girls of color is “kept up” in a British school.
  102. 2 Letter XIV “On the Acquirements of Girls in the Knowledge of Music, Needlework, Drawing, Dancing &c.—Thoughts on the Education of the Heart in preference to the Shewy Accomplishments,” in Letters Addressed to Two Young Married Ladies, on the Most Interesting Subjects (Dublin: Printed for James and William Porter, and for John Cash, 1782) 208-10. Indeed, Edward Long describes the extreme lengths white Caribbean women went to ‘secure’ their whiteness when he writes, “The Creole white ladies, till lately, adopted the practice so far, as never to venture a journey, without securing their complexions with a brace of handkerchiefs; one of which being tied over the forehead, the other under the nose, and covering the lower part of the face, formed a compleat helmet.” The History of Jamaica Vol. II. III. iii. 413.
  103. 3 Her letter appears in Richardson Wright’s Revels In Jamaica 1682-1838 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1937) 155. The stigma of speaking in a Creole dialect is reflected further by this contemporary observer: “yet I must own myself most deplorably Ignorant, as to many of the American Languages, particularly those that are spoke in some of the more Inland Parts of that vast Continent... especially that beautiful pybald, black and white Lingo pallarber’d in its greatest purity by the Creolians of Jamaica” (John Armstrong, “To Omichron *Lick-Devil, esq. Printer in London”), in Miscellanies. In Two Volumes (London, 1770) 34-35. Also see Appendix D3 for Moreton’s derision of Creole dialect.
  104. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 23
  105. 1 “Let it Lie Upon the Table,” 24.
  106. 2 Between Black andWhite: Race, Politics, and the Free Coloreds in Jamaica 1792-1865 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1981). Heumah’s book offers a solid account of the political activities of people of color in Jamaica both pre- and post-emancipation.
  107. 3 Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in 18th Century English Narratives (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995) 1. Impossible Purities (16).
  108. 24 INTRODUCTION
  109. 1 The 1800 Act of Union created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
  110. 2 Kathleen Wilson, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (Uondon: Routledge, 2003) 148.
  111. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 25
  112. 1 This amount is recorded in Act 28, clause IX of 1761, “to prevent the inconveniences arising from exorbitant grants and devises made by white persons to negroes, and the issue of negroes; and to restrain and limit such grants and devises.” The Lam of Jamaica: Comprehending All The Acts In Force Passed Between the Thirty-SecondYear of the Reign of King Charles The Second, and the Thirty-ThirdYear of the Reign of King George The Third. Vol. II, The Second Edition (St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica: Printed by Alexander Aikman, 1802).
  113. 26 INTRODUCTION
  114. 1 See Appendix Gl.
  115. 2 Indeed, beginning in 1801, Miller spent six years trying to secure freedom for her children who were born free but had been trepanned back into slavery. See Jerome S. Handler’s The Unappropriated People: Freedmen in the Slave Society of Barbados (Baltimore, MD; London, UK: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974) 60.
  116. 3 See Appendix D1 for Edwards’ description of the way people of color treated Negro slaves.
  117. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 27
  118. 1 Mansfield Park, 136.
  119. 2 Ibid., 102.
  120. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 29
  121. 1 Between Black and White , Gad Heuman’s excellent history about people of color in Jamaica, focuses largely on men.
  122. 2 Mary Nugent, The Journal of her Residence in Jamaica from 1801-1805, ed. Philip Wright (Mona, Jamaica: UWI Press, 2002) 69.
  123. 3 Ibid., xxix.
  124. 4 Nugent’s refusal to publicly associate with women of color contrasts ^ with Teresia Constantia Phillips who, Kathleen Wilson argues, buoyed her reputation in the colonies by openly surrounding herself with people of color. See “The Black Widow: Gender, Race and Performance in England and Jamaica,” Chapter 4 of The Island Race 129-68.
  125. 5 My sincere thanks to Hoya extraordinaire, John Glavin, for this revealing piece of Georgetown lore.
  126. 30 INTRODUCTION
  127. 1 Tropicopolitans, 4.
  128. 2 These titles are listed on the original 1808 title page contained in this edition.
  129. 3 Peter Garside believes that women writers dominated the novel genre at the turn of the 19th century (Bibliographical Survey , 74-75).
  130. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 31
  131. 1 The heroines in The Negro Slaves (1796), The Betrothal in Santo Domingo (1811) and Zoflora, or the Generous Negro Girl (1804). These female characters show that male writers on the European Continent recognized the significance of a central black heroine; however, I have ruled out the possibility that The Woman of Colour’s, author was a continental European since there is no indication that the novel is written in translation. Furthermore, none of the texts above were originally published in English.
  132. 2 Faced with a similar problem of unknown authorship, Michele Burnham astutely observes that “it is finally not because of who its author may or may not have been that this novel is important ... The Female American articulated for readers ... an often radical vision of race and gender.” The Female American (Peterborough, ON: Broadview,
  133. 2001) 23-24.The same holds true for TheWoman of Colour.
  134. 3 I am referring here to the well-known heiress of color in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1847-8).
  135. 4 See Appendix E2. Hester Thrale’s alarm is shared by Humphrey Clinker’s Mr. Melford who, in a letter to Sir Watkin Phillips, describes himself as “extremely diverted” to see a mix of people at a ball which “was opened by a Scotch Lord, with a mulatto heiress from St. Christopher’s” (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968) 46.
  136. 32 INTRODUCTION
  137. 1 See Appendix B for an example of a Grenadian “Mulatto Woman” poet published prior to 1808.
  138. 2 His brief obituary appears in The Times of 1 March 1806: “On Tuesday, the 18th instant, after a long and painful illness in Great Tower Street, Andrew Wright, Esq. of St. Elizabeth’s Jamaica.” See Appendix G2 for
  139. , relevant portions of Andrew Wright’s will.
  140. 3 Antony Maitland’s Wrights of St Elizabeth’s Family 30 March 2004 <http://www.antonymaitland.com/wright01.htm> and Jamaican Maitland Family 9 June 2005 <http://www.antonymaitland.com/jammaitl. htm> provided this extremely helpful genealogical information. Ann’s marriage is recorded on 29 July 1806.
  141. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 33
  142. #
  143. «4
  144. 1 Such exaggerated names led Thomas Pringle to write, “It is a common practice with the colonists to give ridiculous names of this description to their slaves; being, in fact, one of the numberless modes of expressing the habitual contempt with which they regard the negro race.” The History of Mary Prince, ed. Sara Salih (London: Penguin, 2000) 29.
  145. 34 INTRODUCTION
  146. 1 Racial deference was a fact of life for all classes of people of color, as Bryan Edwards points out: “the lowest and most worthless white will behave with insolence to the best educated free man of colour” (see Appendix Dl).
  147. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 35
  148. 1 Some Reflections Upon Marriage with Additions. The Fourth Edition, 1730 (New York: Source Book Press, 1970) 107.
  149. 2 Minor, marriageable heiresses of color who appear in British literature
  150. do not usually address this issue with as much depth. See Appendices C4 and C5. •>
  151. 3 There are significant parallels between Olivia and Unca: both are mixed race heiresses unconstrained by the limits of domesticity; both are racial outcasts within English society; both are romantically pursued by white men; both combine rigorous obedience to a father’s will with an equal dedication to religion.
  152. 36 INTRODUCTION
  153. 1 For more on the Jewish elements in these texts see Michael Ragussis’ Figures of Conversion: “The Jewish Question” and English National Identity (Durham: Duke UP, 1995), 57-88, 89-129.
  154. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 37
  155. 1 Lise Winer et al. states that protest novels, “focused primarily on making points about racism and slavery, and protest literature tends to have luridly violent villains, handsome and brave heroes, and heroines whose virtue is surpassed only by their helplessness” Adolphus, A Tale & The Slave Son (Jamaica: UWI Press, 2003) 1. Sara Salih writes that “Marj Prince’s History is ... a piece of propaganda, a protest designed to convince the English reader that the iniquities in the colonies continued even though an Act of Parliament ending the slave trade had been passed in 1807” (xxx). In this introduction, I have argued that The Woman of Colour agrees with, but historically pre-dates, both of these definitions of “protest literature.”
  156. 38 INTRODUCTION
  157. 1 Ann duCille, The Coupling Convention: Sex, Text and Tradition in Black Women’s Fiction (New York: Oxford UP, 1993) 4-5.
  158. 2 The Pleasures of Exile (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1999) 38.
  159. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 39
  160. 1 A contemporary reviewer of Elizabeth Hamilton’s Letters of a Hindoo Rajah (ed. P. Perkins and S. Russell; Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1999) writes: “There is no better vehicle for local satire than that of presenting remarks on the manners, laws, and customs of a nation, through the supposed medium of a foreigner, whose different view of things, as tinctured by the particular ideas and associations to which his mind has been habituated, often affords an excellent scope for raillery” (309).
  161. 2 See Tatler 171, 13 May 1710 and especially Spectator No. 50, 27 April 1711, for the Indian King Sa GaYean Qua Rash Tow’s “lost” manu- A script; An Heroic Epistle, from Omiah, to the Queen of Otaheite; being His remarks on the English nation. With notes by the Editor (London: T. Evans, 1775); The Ranelean Religion Displayed in a Letter From a Hottentot of Distinction, Now in London, To his Friend at the Cape of Good Hope. Containing the Reasons assign’d by the Raneleans for abolishing Christianity, together with a true copy of their New Liturgy (London: W. Webb, 1750).
  162. 40 INTRODUCTION
  163. 1 Forty Years’Correspondence Between Geniusses Ov Boath Sexes, and James Elphinston; In Six Pocket- Vollumes: Foar Ov Oridginal Letters, Two’ Ov Poetry. Vollume II (London: W. Ritchardson, J. Deighton, R. Cheyn, and R Hil, 1791) Letter cxvii, 6.
  164. 2 See Appendix D2.
  165. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 41
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  197. 1 The William Cowper epigraph is from The Task (1784), Book II, “The Time Piece”: “He finds his fellow guilty of a skin / Not colour’d like his own; and, having power / To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
  198. / Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey” (12-15).
  199. [over]
  200. 1 Packet has a double meaning, referring not only to the collection of letters but also the mailboat used to carry them to Jamaica.
  201. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 53
  202. 1 Olivia’s claim that Marcia “fell the victim of gratitude” develops Maria Edgeworth’s relatively uncomplicated representation of this emotion in The Grateful Negro. Where gratitude unquestionably ennobles Edgeworth’s enslaved Caesar, The Woman of Colours author clearly evokes Marcia’s victimized exploitation from the same emotion.
  203. 2 A phrase used in numerous secular and spiritual instances but particularly resonant with John Wesley, the eighteenth century preacher and founder of the Methodist church, who in 1741 published “Almost a Christian. A Sermon” which, by 1766, was in its eleventh edition and still being remarked upon ‘by a member of the established church’ in 1792.
  204. 54 ANONYMOUS
  205. 1 Another ideological stab at the policy of benevolent paternalism famously espoused in Edgeworth’s The Grateful Negro. Neither Mr. Edwards nor Mr. Fairfield tries to improve their slaves intellectually. By pointing this out, Olivia is directly critiquing the extent of her father’s benevolence.
  206. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 55
  207. 1 Yes, yes.
  208. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 57
  209. 1 Psalm 104: 3.
  210. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 61
  211. 1 Psalm 107: 23-24.
  212. 2 Edward Young, The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality (1742), “Night the Fifth.”
  213. 62 ANONYMOUS
  214. 1 Here, Honeywood manipulates part of Duke Senior’s speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It: “And this our life exempt from public haunt / Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, / Sermons in stones and good in everything” (II.i). Honeywood’s use of “God” in place of “good” emphasizes the anonymous author’s need to construct Olivia not merely as a moral woman but an overtly religious one.
  215. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 65
  216. 1 Located on the west coast of England, Bristol was a port city second only to Liverpool in trading goods associated with the slave trade.
  217. 2 A well-known and bustling tavern on Corn Street in Bristol. It was demolished in 1854.
  218. 68 ANONYMOUS
  219. 1 John Milton, L’Allegro (1645): “Towered cities please us then, / And the busy hum of men.”
  220. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 69
  221. 1 William Cowper, “Verses Supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk during his solitary abode in the Island of Juan Fernandez” (1782).
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  277. 1 The state of being carelessly or partially dressed.
  278. 2 Nikolaus Heideloff’s Gallery of Fashion, a luxurious fashion magazine published between 1794 and 1803.
  279. 76 ANONYMOUS
  280. 1 William Cowper, “Verses Supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk during his solitary abode in the Island of Juan Fernandez (1782).
  281. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 83
  282. 1 John Milton, L’Allegro (1645): “Come, and trip it, as you go, / On the
  283. light fantastic toe.” *
  284. 2 Beginning at the age of seven and reoccurring at various years that are multiples of seven, the climacterics were considered by the ancient Greeks to be critical years in an individual’s life. During these years the individual’s body would undergo changes and be at greater risk of death. The last one of them—the “grand climacteric”—occurred at 63 years old.
  285. 86 ANONYMOUS
  286. 1 Diminutive.
  287. 2 Attar (or otto) of roses: rose oil; fragrant oil obtained from roses and used in making perfume.
  288. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 87
  289. 1 The New Way of the Highland Laddie,” in The Chearful Companion containing a Select Collection of Favourite Scots and English Songs, Catches &c. (Perth. J. Gillies, 1783) CCXII, 280-81. The correct wording is “Ah! Sure a pair was never seen.”
  290. 88 ANONYMOUS
  291. * This does not appear. [Author’s note.]
  292. 94 ANONYMOUS
  293. 1 Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village” (1770), in which he
  294. describes a cottage interior: “The chest contrived a double debt to pay, / A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.”
  295. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 95
  296. 1 Probably referring to the menagerie in the Tower of London which housed a number of exotic animals. It was regularly open to the public by 1804.
  297. 2 William Wordsworth, Descriptive Sketches. In Verse. Taken During a Pedestrian Tour in the Italian, Grison, Swiss and Savoyard Alps (1793): “But now with other soul I stand alone / Sublime upon this far surveying cone.”
  298. 3 Unknown reference. However, Olivia’s ideas here are in line with those of the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations appeared in translation in 1792: “Nay, those facetious gentlemen, who, like Menippus, made a jest of the frail and transitory state of human life: consider,
  299. I say, that all these different characters are long since consigned to * gloomy mansions of the dead. And, indeed, what evil are they sensible of in their tombs? Or what evil do they suffer, whose very names are buried in oblivion? In short, there is nothing here much worth our attention, but to act on all occasions with a regard to truth and justice, and to live peaceably even with those who act with fraud and injustice.”
  300. 96 ANONYMOUS
  301. 1 30 Luke 12:15: “a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his
  302. possessions.”
  303. 2 A question posed by Paul in 2 Corinthians 2:16.
  304. 3 Oliver Goldsmith “The Deserted Village” (1770).
  305. 98 ANONYMOUS
  306. 1 Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751): “And froze the genial current of the soul.”
  307. 2 Dido’s use of “doctor” as a verb is interesting especially in light of Mary Seacole’s later understanding of herself as a “doctress.” Both women implicitly reject the term “nurse.”
  308. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 99
  309. 1 “Wowsky” is the famous Indian female in George Colman’s Inkle and Yarico (1787). Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language in Miniature defines ‘squab’ as “thick and short.” “Guashy” refers to “Quashy,” a common literary name for male or female blacks in, for instance, Thomas Morris’s poem “Quashy; or The Coal Black MaM” (1796), Samuel Jackson Pratt’s The New Cosmetic (1790), John Fawcett’s' Obi; or, Three Finger’d Jack (1800), and “Quasheba” from Isaac Bickerstaffe’s Love in the City (1767). See also “The Legend of Quashy” in Wylie Sypher’s Guinea’s Captive Kings (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1942) 143-44.
  310. 100 ANONYMOUS
  311. 1 A phrase adapted from William Congreve’s The Mourning Bride (1697):
  312. • “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned” (Ill.viii). The author might also have had Lieutenant General John Burgoyne’s 1786 comedy The Heiress in mind since Letitia has the same thirst for vengeance as Burgoyne’s heroine, Miss Alscrip, who closes the second act of this play with the same words as Letitia.
  313. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 101
  314. 1 Taken from Joseph Addison’s Cato (1712), I.iv.
  315. 2 Augustus mistakenly attributes this quotation to Sir John Suckling, but it must come from John Donne’s “A Funeral Elegy” (1610): “Her pure and eloquent blood / Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought; / That one would almost say her body thought.”
  316. 102 ANONYMOUS
  317. 1 Psalm 103:4 or Luke 1:78.
  318. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 103
  319. *
  320. 1 1709. The Tatler was a very influential British magazine founded in'*
  321. 1709 by Richard Steele, who published under the pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaffe.
  322. 2 Edward Jerningham, Lines Written in the Album at Cossey-Hall, Norfolk, the Seat of Sir William Jerningham, Bart. Aug 4th 1786. The correct wording is “The scintillations of her playful mind.”
  323. 106 ANONYMOUS
  324. 1 Olivia seems to speak half of the common phrase “the world’s dread laugh, / Which scarce the firm philosopher can scorn” quoted in texts as diverse as James Fordyce’s popular Sermons toYoungWomen (1766) and James Thomson’s The Seasons (1730), “Autumn.”
  325. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 113
  326. 1 A popular traditional ballad.
  327. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 115
  328. 1 Johann Kasper Lavater (1741-1801) was a Swiss writer, Protestant pastor, and founder of Physiognomies.
  329. 2 Proverbs 22:6.
  330. 1 18 ANONYMOUS
  331. 1 Don Diego ‘musing’ at the beginning of Isaac Bickerstaffe’s The Padlock (1768): “My doors shall be lock’d, / My windows be block’d, / No male in the house, / Not so much as a mouse” (I.i).
  332. 120 ANONYMOUS
  333. 1 Matthew 6:24.
  334. 122 ANONYMOUS
  335. 1 Alexander Pope, “The Universal Prayer” (1738): “Teach me to feel another’s woe, / To hide the fault I see.”
  336. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 125
  337. 1 Matthew 5:44.
  338. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 127
  339. 130
  340. 131
  341. 132
  342. 133
  343. 134
  344. 135
  345. 136
  346. 137
  347. 138
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  349. 140
  350. 141
  351. 142
  352. 143
  353. 144
  354. 145
  355. 146
  356. 147
  357. 148
  358. 1 Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard” (1751). 128 ANONYMOUS
  359. 1 Aesop’s fable “The Cat and the Mice” (sometimes called “Mice in Council” or “The Belling of the Cat.”), in which the proverb is, it is no use having bright ideas unless we are willing to put them into practice.
  360. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 129
  361. 1 A character in Nicholas Rowe’s play The Fair Penitent (1703) who seduces and betrays the female lead; the name has come to mean any lecherous male.
  362. 130 ANONYMOUS
  363. 1 Jacob agreed to serve Rachel’s father, Laban, for seven years in order to win her love.
  364. 132 ANONYMOUS
  365. 1 The opening lines of a song from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It (Il.vii).
  366. 2 Spoken by the Apothecary in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (V.i.78).
  367. 134 ANONYMOUS
  368. 1 Proverbs 22:2.
  369. 2 Matthew 20:12.
  370. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 135
  371. 1 Psalm 126:5.
  372. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 137
  373. 1 Taken from Lear’s speech in William Shakespeare’s King Lear (III.iv.2930).
  374. 2 Matthew 6:3.
  375. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 139
  376. 1 John Wesley’s “A Prayer in Time of Affliction,” in A Christian Library Consisting of Extracts from and Abridgements of the Choicest Pieces of Practical Divinity, which have been Published in the English Tongue. In 50 Volumes (Bristol: Printed by Felix Farley, 1749-55), Vol. XXI, 231. The correct wording is “So these light afflictions which are but for a moment, may work for me a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”
  377. 144 ANONYMOUS
  378. 149
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  441. 212
  442. 1 Monmouthshire is located in South-East Wales. Eleanor Ty writes, “The town Monmouth is located at the confluence of the Rivers Wye and Monnow. The region, roughly bordering the Usk Valley in the west, the Wye Valley in the east, and the Bristol Channel to the south, is pleasingly diversified. A portion is mountainous and rocky, but the rich land in the valleys and hills is full of woods and pastures.” The Victim of Prejudice by Mary Hays, ed. Eleanor Ty (Broadview, 1998), p. 179, n. 9. Monmouthshire might have symbolic importance for heroines such as Hays’ Mary Raymond as well as Olivia Fairfield since its ambiguous position on the border of England and Wales made its ownership and governance extremely unclear until the confusion was finally corrected in the 1960s. An eighteenth-century woman’s residence in this area—on the fringes of two national borders but securely anchored to neither— seems to be a fitting location for emphasizing the liminality that both of these women embody in their respective texts.
  443. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 147
  444. 1 A line from Duke Senior’s speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (Il.i. 12).
  445. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 153
  446. 1 Mark 12:25.
  447. 2 Revelation 21:4.
  448. 154 ANONYMOUS
  449. 1 Luke 12:20.
  450. 2 Psalm 119:71.
  451. 156 ANONYMOUS
  452. 1 A loose rendering of Macduff’s speech in Macbeth'. “I cannot but remember such things were, / That were most precious to me”
  453. (IV.iii.222-23).
  454. 2 Karl Marx wrote, “During the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt the hardships of the journey and hunger caused, according to the Bible, the faint-hearted among them longingly to think of the days of captivity when at least they had enough to eat. The phrase “ to long for the fleshpots of Egypt ” has become a proverb,” The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (New York: International Publishers, 1987) 142, n. 5.
  455. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 157
  456. 1 Forming a part of the border between England and Wales, the rive£ Wye is the sixth longest river in the UK.
  457. 2 A common phrase used in many treatises on female education. For example, John Burton’s Lectures on Female Education and Manners (1793) commands women to “cultivate your minds, that you may never be at a loss for rational employment, or harmless amusement; and so to improve your dispositions, by charity and candour, that the sufferings
  458. 158 ANONYMOUS
  459. 1 Robert Blair, “The Grave” (1743): “Prone on the lowly grave of the dear man / She drops; while busy meddling memory, / In barbarous succession, musters up / The past endearments of their softer hours, / Tenacious of its theme.”
  460. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 163
  461. 1 Perhaps a reference to John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667): “Th’ imperial ensign, which, full high advanc’d, / Shone like a meteor, streaming to the wind” (1.536-7).
  462. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 171
  463. 1 Untraced reference.
  464. 172 ANONYMOUS
  465. 1 As a living example of stoicism during the period of the Roman Empire, the Roman slave Epictetus built his life and teachings around the Greek maxim “anexou kai apexou”: “bear and forebear.”
  466. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 173
  467. 1 Former, or ex.
  468. 176 ANONYMOUS
  469. 1 As his punishment in Tartarus, the deepest portion of the Underworld, Greek hero Tantalus stood chin-deep in water with fruits above his head. Whenever he tried to drink or eat, the water receded and the fruit moved out of reach. It was from the eternal torture of temptation without satisfaction that Tantalus’ punishment became associated with the English word “tantalize.”
  470. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 181
  471. 1 Olivia may be evoking these lines from Mark Akenside’s The Pleasures of Imagination. A Poem. In Three Books (1774): “O! he will tell thee, that the wealth of worlds / Should ne’er seduce his bosom to forego / That sacred hour” (II, 688-90).
  472. 182 ANONYMOUS
  473. 1 Perhaps a loose rendition of lines from Alexander Pope’s translation of Homer’s The Odyssey (1725-26): “With heavy hearts we labour through the tide, / To coasts unknown, and oceans yet untried” (Book IX).
  474. 184 ANONYMOUS
  475. 1 The quotation comes not from Samuel Richardson’s famous heroine but that of Isaac Bickerstaffe in his comic opera Lionel and Clarissa
  476. . (Il.xi).
  477. 2 James Thomson, The Seasons, “Spring”: “An elegant sufficiency, content, / Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books, / Ease and alternate labour, useful life, / Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven!” Compare with the “fine Utopian scheme of domestic happiness” in Olivia’s mind at the end of her last letter in packet two.
  478. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 193
  479. 1 A reworking of Morocco’s speech to Portia in The Merchant of Venice: “Mislike me not for my complexion, / The shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun,” (II.i. 1-2).
  480. 196 APPENDIX A
  481. 1 James Thomson, The Seasons , “Autumn.”
  482. 198 APPENDIX A
  483. 1 A line from the Ghost’s speech in Hamlet , I.v.75.
  484. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 203
  485. 1 Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Friendship in Death in Twenty Letters from the Dead to the Living. Letter VI, To Clorinda.
  486. 210 APPENDIX A
  487. 213
  488. 214
  489. 215
  490. 216
  491. * A Lady who attended Mr. Weasil, a Minister of the Gospel in Jamaica, during his sickness and death. [Author’s note.]
  492. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 213
  493. 217
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  497. 221
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  500. 224
  501. 225
  502. 226
  503. 227
  504. 1 A writ to commission private persons to do some act in place of a judge; for instance, to examine a witness.
  505. 218 APPENDIX C
  506. 1 Robert Lowth (1710-87) was a bishop of the Church of England and a professor of poetry at Oxford University. His textbooks on English Grammar were incredibly influential.
  507. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 221
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  531. 251
  532. 252
  533. 253
  534. 1 Womb.
  535. 232 APPENDIX D
  536. 1 Westminster and Eton are elite private schools. Located near to Westminster Abbey, Westminster School’s history dates back to the 12th century; Eton secondary school was founded in 1440 by Henry and is still extremely popular with British royalty. Rather than referring to a , particular school. Long’s reference to ‘Chelsea’ seems to suggest the area known for its great number of fashionable and successful private schools, especially for girls. For a solid account of these Chelsea schools, see “Social history: Education: private schools,” A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 12: Chelsea, ed. Patricia E.C. Croot (2004) 190-95.
  537. 236 APPENDIX D
  538. 1 Usque ad deliquium literally means “all the way to a spontaneous loss of » consciousness caused by insufficient blood to the brain.” Long implies that his African mistress is a ‘chief leech’ who bleeds her cull until he faints or swoons.
  539. 2 Joseph Addison’s Cato (1712): “In troth, thou’rt able to instruct gray hairs, / And teach the wily African deceit!” (I.iii)
  540. 238 APPENDIX D
  541. 1 Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-88), French naturalist, mathematician, and biologist whose work influenced Charles Darwin.
  542. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 241
  543. 1 Girls of pleasure, euphemism for prostitutes. (French.) 242 APPENDIX D
  544. 1 The Roman poet Ovid wrote a fifteen-book poem, Metamorphoses , to explain the creation and history of the world in terms of Greek and Roman mythology. Transformation is the unifying theme which Ovid uses to bring together this vast collection of narratives.
  545. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 243
  546. 1 All fashionable places of pleasure. Ranelagh was a public pleasure garden in Chelsea. It was considered much more fashionable than its older rival, the Vauxhall Gardens in Kennington. Founded in 1683 by Richard Sadler as a place of entertainment, and briefly popular for the medicinal wells that were subsequently found on his property, Sadler’s Wells put on pantomimes, variety acts and light opera in London during the summer months when the Theatres Royal (Covent Garden and Drury Lane) were on hiatus.
  547. ' 2 Moreton is paraphrasing the first verse of the song “The Pink of Macaronies” sung in John O’Keeffe’s Agreeable Surprise (1781): “In Jacky Bull, when bound for France, / The gosling you discover; / But taught to ride, to fence, to dance, / A finish’d goose comes over. / With his tierce and carte,—fa! fa! / And his cotillion so smart—ha! ha! / He charms each female heart—oh! la! / As Jacky returns from Dover.”
  548. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 245
  549. 1 Moreton might be evoking the spirit of these lines from Mark Akenside’s The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744): “When joined at eve, / Soft-murmuring streams and gales of gentlest breath / Melodious Philomela’s wakeful strain / Attemper, could not man’s discerning ear / Through all its tones the sympathy pursue” (471-75).
  550. 246 APPENDIX D
  551. 1 Proverbs 31:10.
  552. 248 APPENDIX D
  553. 1 By “Hostess,” Moreton is probably referring to St. Martha, the sister of Mary and Lazarus, who was known for the illustrious hospitality she gave to Jesus when he stayed in Bethany.
  554. 2 Moreton is evoking the story in Genesis 39 in which Joseph rises to become overseer in the house of Potiphar, an Egyptian captain. In this exalted position, Joseph is sexually propositioned a number of times by Potiphar’s wife, whom he continually refuses to “lie” with. During one such occasion, Joseph runs away from Mrs. Potiphar’s advances only to find that she has managed to grab his clothing off his back as he leaves. In a fit of pique at his continued rejection, she uses this clothing as evidence to accuse Joseph of attempted rape. Potiphar immediately throws him into prison. But in prison, Joseph is vindicated “because the Lord was with him.” By illustrating his experiences as a principled yet persecuted ‘Joseph,’ Moreton gives his male readers carte blanche to act upon their sexual appetites with mulatto women since his own life illustrates that there is nothing for them to gain (and everything to lose) from maintaining a sexually principled stance.
  555. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 251
  556. 254
  557. 255
  558. 256
  559. 257
  560. 258
  561. 1 Hannah More (1745-1833) poet, dramatist, member of Samuel Johnson’s literary circle, philanthropist, and moral and religious writer. William Wilberforce (1759-1833) was an outstanding English parliamentarian and one of the main advocates responsible for bringing about the abolition of the slave trade in 1807.
  562. 2 From John 10:14-16: “I am the Good Shepherd; I know My sheep, and My sheep know Me—just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father—and I lay down My Life for the sheep. I have other sheep which are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They will hear My Voice, and there will be One Flock, and One Shepherd.
  563. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 253
  564. 1 Probably a reference to the abolition bill that William Wilberforce introduced into parliament in 1791. It was soundly defeated by a 75 vote margin (163/88).
  565. 2 Perhaps an oblique (and, if so, incorrect) reference to either of two declarations (1738 and 1777 [Declaration du roi pour la police des noirs ]) both of which re-articulated the conditions under which colonists could bring slaves to France without losing them. Both declarations were amendments to the Edict of 1716 that originally allowed slave importations to France. These declarations were aimed at reducing the number of free blacks in France by policing their introduction to French society and limiting their ability to stay if manumitted. The 1777 law also prohibited the entry of all blacks, mulattoes and other people of color into France.
  566. 3 Ignatius Sancho (c. 1729-80) was a friend of David Garrick, correspondent of Laurence Sterne, and mentor to Julius Soubise. His own collection of letters was published posthumously in 1782 to great public acclaim as a testimony of the intellectual capabilities of the African. A contemporary of Sancho’s and celebrated by him in one of his letters, Phillis Wheatley (1753-84) was an African child-prodigy poet from Massachusetts whose poems were published to great public acclaim in England in 1773.
  567. 4 Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), statesman, celebrated philosopher, and poet best known for his work as defender of the scientific revolution. John Milton (1608-74), well known for Paradise Lost (1667) and many other poetic classics.
  568. THE WOMAN OF COLOUR 255
  569. *
  570. 1 “Athanasius arrayed against the world.” Dubbed the “Father of Orthodoxy,” Athanansius (c. 296-373) was one of the greatest champions and defenders of Catholic beliefs.
  571. 2 Perhaps referring to Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative , which was published in 1789.
  572. 256 APPENDIX E
  573. 259
  574. 260
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  576. 262
  577. 263
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  579. 265
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  589. 276