Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy (30 page)

concerning Government
, resulted in his arrest and execution in 1683.

A constitutionalist, Sidney believed the monopolist monarchies of the

Tudors and Stuarts were predicated on the undermining of feudal-

ism and the “tripartite balance of king, lords, and commons.” The

“eclipse” of this system “unhinged the monarchy, rendering the pre-

rogative erratic and untrustworthy” (Houston 258).28 The signifi-

cance of Ashe’s pairing only emerges if a reader connects the
Phoenix

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and
The Spirit of “the Book”
as cooperating with each other—news-

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paper and novel engaged in the common project of bringing down a

corrupt and self-serving government. This strategic nomination looks

like republicanism, but only if one doesn’t look too closely. In Ashe’s

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formulation government, in the figure of Perceval, is the enemy, not

the ally, of the monarchy, which Ashe represents as a network of vul-

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nerable and fragmented families rather than a political institution.

Ashe reports that his anger at Perceval began when Perceval stopped

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his salary at the
Political Register
upon learning that he was also writ-

ing for the opposition (in an effort to retain him, he says, Blagdon

had got Perceval to stake his salary on the strength of his eloquent

support of the Government). Personal animus now joins with self-

interest to shift his politics to the left. “But no sooner had I an alterca-

tion with Mr. Perceval, than I felt myself at liberty to contemplate the

condition of the country in another point of view” (III. 75).29 In van-

quishing Perceval, Ashe claims to be defending the Princess’s reputa-

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tion. In his construction of events, chivalry demands exposure, rather

than suppression, of the “facts” of the case, and her former protector

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becomes her persecutor: Perceval is the gothic-style villain, who hides

the evidence of her innocence and preys on the royal family’s natural

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feelings of “horror, remorse, and dismay” to engineer his own rise.

Ashe implies the royal family have been the dupes of the Princess’s

“accuser,” although he remains cagey as to who that accuser is. Not

so Perceval’s villainy. Perceval is the real blackmailer, Ashe the hon-

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est defender of truth, and Whigs and Tories are united in a domestic

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melodrama of all the talents—victims of a common enemy whose

actions are explained by personal hubris rather than party affiliation.

Ashe and not Perceval, therefore, is the true author of a book whose

generic classification lies in essence rather than form.

Ashe’s promise—that his book will prove Caroline’s innocence

and discomfit the royal family—depends on its identification as a

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R o y a l R o m a n c e s

roman à clef. Yet that identification must be incorrect. In order to

feel the frisson of recognition, of complicity with the political black-

mailer who has enemies, if not friends, in high places, his readers

must be ignorant of the contents of Perceval’s book. The Satirist notes

this bind in a poem printed in the June 1813 number, four months

after the actual Book was published. The poem, titled “The Literary

Esquires’ Last Farewell to the World,” laments the fate of Ashe and

others who attempted to capitalize on the rumors about the Book,

now that their livelihoods have been taken from him.

I of a Princess heard some tales,

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And also of the Prince of Wales;

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I swore the Book contain’d them all:

The Book came out and work’d my fall. (“ ‘The Book’ Gentry” 552)

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The poem is prefaced with a letter from the author, “a Friend to the

Miserable,” which points out that “[T]he poor indefatigable literary

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Esquires, who formerly could get food, and sometimes even appear in

the public streets, when out of jail, without shocking female delicacy

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by their nakedness, are now all at once thrown out of work” (549).

The poem focuses on Ashe and John Agg, who published his pam-

phlet
The Book Itself ; or, Secret Memoirs of an Illustrious Princess
in

1813. Agg’s plot is even further removed from the story of the delicate

investigation than Ashe’s. It focuses as much on the Prince of Wales

as on Caroline, and particularly on his Whig alliances in the 1790s.

Agg’s
Othello
-like story of conspiracy recalls
The Royal Legend
’s tale

of the Cavalier. The “intrigues, deep and devilish” (Agg 18) of the

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Prince’s companions drive the couple apart and send him back into

the arms of “the fat, yet beauteous and fascinating, Fitzhar, known by

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the surname, ‘the fat witch’ ” (5).30

The title page identifies
The Book Itself
, which is just over thirty pages

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and sells for one shilling, as “A Political, Amatory, and Fashionable

Work, Concisely Abridged from Mr. Agg’s New Work, ‘THE BOOK

DISCOVERED.’ ” “Political, Amatory, and Fashionable” is a nod to

Ashe’s subtitle, “A Political and Amatory Romance.” I can find no

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record of
The Book Discovered
, but it probably did exist, as
The Book

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Itself
contains awkward transitions and gaps in information that sug-

gest a hasty condensing. Agg may have rushed to get the pamphlet

into print to recoup anticipated losses from a full-length novel that

came out just too late. The original title references the history of

the Book’s suppression and, like Ashe’s advertisement in
The Phoenix
,

implies a “discovery” that privileges its author/editor. The word

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Th e N o v e l , R e g e n c y, D o m e s t i c a t i o n o f R o y a l t y 109

suggests not just a lucky find but an unveiling, a dramatic lifting of

the cover off the original document. Agg made the discovery, and he

has dis-covered it for us, giving us the book “itself” that was hiding

beneath. This is the same gesture Ashe makes when he titles his novel

The Spirit of “the Book
.” Ashe and Agg don’t have to get the letter

right, as long as the actual Book remains hidden. It is the one source

against which no one checks their writing. All they have to do is make

their readers believe that they can render the essence. The essence, in

turn, evokes the letter and legitimizes their imposture: the “spirit” of

the Book is the Book “itself.”31

Both Agg and Ashe are counting on their readers recognizing

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their books as repackaging: the Book did not “ sell” in its original

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form, so the enterprising editor spruces it up with a new title and dif-

ferent advertising, puts it back on the market, and this time it does

very well.32 Ashe’s version of the Book looks more like a novel than

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the original: its epistolarity draws attention to itself as a convention

superimposed on an existing narrative. No logic determines when one

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letter ends and the next begins; sometimes a letter will be broken off

because of the professed fatigue or emotional distress of the writer,

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but as often a letter will simply continue the thought introduced in

the previous entry—rather as a new paragraph than a new epistle. The

letters are numbered rather than dated, and, after the first, which is

marked “Caroline to Charlotte,” they contain no headings.

Ashe is attempting to provoke his readers into the kind of sympa-

thetic identification with the Caroline of his novel that Lynn Hunt

identifies in the epistolary fiction of the eighteenth century. This is

sometimes a challenge, as Caroline can be inconsistent in her profes-

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sions of virtue. Does she sleep with Algernon, for instance? Unclear,

nor is it clear how Ashe intends for us to understand her fall, if fall

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she does. Is it a daring instance of Godwinian free love and a sen-

timental recuperation of the idea of virtue? Or is it an example of

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regrettable but understandable frailty, the inevitable result of paren-

tal neglect and bullying? The second accords with Brougham’s and

Austen’s assessments, but Ashe offers both possibilities. In explaining

her decision “to act in a manner, that will, no doubt, in the eyes of

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the world, be deemed indecorous and reprehensible,” and declare her

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love outright, Caroline provides shifting explanations. Noting first

that “ [t]he world will exclaim against me for indelicacy and impa-

tience; for not waiting till Algernon made a proposition, which was

calculated to confirm the happiness of my life,” she counters that

“[t]he world knows nothing of Algernon, and appears equally igno-

rant of my sex” (138). The sentimental oppositions here—impatience

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against calculation, heroine against “the world”—become more

equivocal in the next paragraph, when sensibility becomes something

that looks more like susceptibility:

And as to myself, the world should understand that women, when

in love, are perhaps more passionately, more delicately sensible to the

soft influence than men.—At least I can answer for myself, that, while

under this sweet influence, I paid no manner of attention to the argu-

ments of reason or of judgment.—What arguments, in fact, could be

urged to a heart replete with so tender a passion! (138)

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In a gesture that recalls Ashe’s generalizations about “political writ-

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ers” to vindicate his own inconsistency, Caroline hesitates between

the particular, “myself,” and the general “women,” in her argument

about vulnerability to “influence.” She settles for an individual claim

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that refuses universality and, presumably, exculpation: “At least I can

answer for myself.” The world no longer needs to understand anything

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about women that might justify Caroline’s behavior. She is speaking

for herself alone—at least in that introductory clause. Her rhetoric in

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the second half of the sentence returns to universals. Despite the per-

sonal “I,” the “sweet influence” of her love for Algernon recalls the

“soft influence” that works on the delicate sensibilities of all women.

Both sensibility and influence are gendered feminine in opposition to

the masculine “arguments of reason or of judgment,” which are no

match for a “heart replete with so tender a passion!”33

But susceptibility turns out to be a good thing. It rises above petty

decorum and self-interest, and we are back in the language of sen-

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sibility: “ Woe to the woman whose heart is so little susceptible as

to consult the little decorums of her sex, and the representations of

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interest, when she should be occupied in facilitating engagements

that never can be too closely formed!” (138). To be too “little” sus-

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ceptible is to be implicated in the “littleness” of a world that turns

women from their natural duties (“she should be occupied”). Still,

the text is cagey. Just how close is this “too” closeness that can never

be reached? If a couple cannot be too close, is there such a thing as

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going too far? Yes and no, apparently. The ambivalence and ambiguity

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continue into the crucial scene, where Ashe manages both to answer