Masters and Servants: Political

Discourse in Richardson's
A Collection of Moral Sentiments
John A. Dussinger

It seems my entertainer was all this while only the butler, who, in his
master's absence, had a mind to cut a figure, and be for a while the
gentleman himself; and, to say the truth, he talked politics as well as
most country gentlemen do.'
Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefreld

Aux vertus qu'on exige dans un domestique, Vove Excellence connait-

elle beaucoup de mattres qui fussent dignes d'btre valets?'
Beaumarchais, Le Barbier de SCville

C ompared to Defoe or Fielding especially, among the early novelists

Richardson seems to have been the most cautious about divulging
his political loyalties, so much so that the most careful biographical read-
ings depend largely on speculation.' Even in his A Collection of the Moral
and Instructive Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions, and Reflexions, published
1 Oliver Goldsmith. The Vicar of Wakefield: A Talc. Sqposed to be written by Hime!$ 2 vols
(London. 1763, 1:208.
2 Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Le Barbier & S&illc, act 1, scene 2 ( M s : hitions
Gmier P*m, 1964), p. 41.
3 See Margaret Anne Doody, "Richardson's Politics." Eighrecnrh-Cenfuq Fiction 2 (1990). 113-
23. Doody links Richardson ingeniously to the Tories against Oeorge 11 and Walpole, and suggesb

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 5, Number 3, April 1993

 240 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION

in 1755 at the end of his writing career, where various opinions are
sifted from his novels and listed alphabetically, not only does Richardson
eschew overt partisan politics, but he sometimes provides quite contra-
dictory stances as if to imply that his role here is that of a "compiler,"
just as in his novels it was that of an "editor."d Despite the lack of ref-
erence to contemporary political issues, however, Richardson's focus on
governance within the family does reveal some clues about how his nov-
els were intended to ratify certain social attitudes in his readers. The
proper management of servants, for instance, which was of obsessive
interest throughout the eighteenth century, is a major theme of his Col-
lection as well as of his three novels and informs the discourse on power
relations in his society as a whole.'
Richardson's general doctrine is that good masters make good servants;
and a principal means of rendering his exemplary wife, Pamela, and
his exemplary landlord, Sir Charles Grandison, is to show the affection
and respect their servants feel towards them. By contrast, one way of
depicting the horror at Harlowe Place is in rendering Clarissa's loss
of authority as a result of the family feud and her humiliation at the
hands of tricky servants who subject her to their impertinent familiarity,

that Sir Charles Grandison was a model of what Bonnie Prince Charles should have been to
be worthy of support. Certainly the inmational theme of Richardson's last novel docs appear
to be what might be called a "swalegy of containment" to help meliorate the rifl between
Protestant and Catholic followers in England in the wake of 1688 and the various subsequent
Jacobite uprisings. For this Marxist critical term, sec Fredric Jameson, The Politirol Unconreious:
Narrative as o Sociolly SymbolicAct (Ithaca: Comell University Press, 1981). pp. 53-54. Doody
also emphasizes that Richardson is so cautious about revealing his loyalties that one can only
speculate about what he believed fmm the circumsfantial evidence of his printing career and
from possible allegorical meanings in his novels. My interpretation of Richardson's political
affinitiesassumes thd they are more Whig than Tory. While interpreting Sir Charles Grandison's
international mle as a British gentleman, Jocelyn Harris also obsewes that he is "a firm suppater
of the Union and the Hanovers," Samuel Richardson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Ress,
1987). p. 141. For the fullest account of this author's career, including his political involvement
as a printer, see T.C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel, Samuel Richardson. A Biography
' (Oxford: Clarendon Ress, 1971).
4 See Rrhardron'~A Cvllrrtmn of rhe Morol odInrrrurroe Smnmmrr. utth an ~ntmductmnby
James E Evans (Delmar. NY Scholar\' Facs~m~les and Repnnu. 1980). hereafter r e f e d to
as the Collocr~vn Volume I I of the Clorma Prolecl. under the edntorQm of nonw Luber.
Margaret Anne M y , and Jim Springer Borck, to be published by AMS P& in 1993, contains
a facsimile of this work, Lo which I have written rhe lnvoduction and Ann Jessie Van Sanf the
Aflenvord.
5 For the rendering of savants in the early novel, see Bruce Robbins, The Semmt's Hand:
English Fiction from Below (New Yo& Columbia University Ress, 1986); and John Richetti,
"Representing an Under Class: Sewanu and Proletarians in Fielding and Smolleu," The New
Eighteenth Cenrury, ed. Felicity Nussbaum and Laura Brown (New Ymk and Landan: Methuen,
1987). pp. 84-98. See also Mary Saliday, "High Life below Stlirs: Sewanu and Mastns in
Eighteenth-Centwy Fiction," unpublished PhD dissertation (University of Illinois, 1990).
 M A S T E R S A N D SERVANTS: P O L I T I C A L DISCOURSE 241

a degradation that culminates in the flagrant abuses and rape suffered

later at Mrs Sinclair's.

*
An awareness that the social hierarchy is arbitrary and based solely on
political power and wealth is pervasive in Richardson's novels, especially
in Pamela; but against the various signals that upward mobility is good,
the great law of subordination is at least as emphatic. Few if any of
the moral sentiments concerning masters and SeNantS in Richardson's
Collection are very original. The following sentiment taken from Pamela
o, under "Children and Servants," may appear at first to be progressively
democratic:

Too great a distance kept up between Children and Servants, may fill the former
with an arrogance that is not warranted by any condition or rank to theiu fellow-
creatures; and, if care be taken, by good examples of superiors, to make good
Servants, such will not deserve to be treated contemptuously, iv. 359. [313].6

But a hundred years before, Francis Osbom could indeed advise his
son to look upon a good servant "under no severer aspect than that of
an humble Friend: the difference between such an one and his Master
residing rather in Fortune than nature." At least in this context Osborn
ignores the mystique of nobility and "the Honour of blood" that Peacham
believed to distinguish an elite from those who were merely rich.'
Just as greater physical and social distance was satisfying the desire
for more domestic privacy, so possibly the improved affective relation-
ships in the family upstairs needed the parallel of a deeper trust in the
emotions belowstairs towards a harmonious g~vernance.~ Perhaps not
6 Pomelo, or Virtue R m r d c d , Shakespeare Head edition. 4 vola (Oxfwd: Basil Blackwell, 1929).
4:331-32. References in parentheses to Pamela 11 rue to vols 3 and 4 of this edition. In Ihe
Collection Richardson describes the references to Pomelo as follows: 'The N u m l s , i. ii. iii.
iv. denote the Volumes; llle first Figures refer to the Ocravo Edition; those inclosed thus [ 1 to
the 3d and subsequent Editions of the Twelves" (Collection, p. I).
7 Francis Osborn. The Work$,8th edition (London, 1682). p. 18. Cf. Henry Peacham: "Nobility is
the Honour of blood in a Race or Linage Isicl, wnfm'd formerly upon some one or more of that
Family, either by the Rince, the Lawes, customes of that Land or Place, whereby either out of
knowledge, culIure of the mind, or by some glorious Action performed, they have been use full
and beneficial to the Commonwealths and places where they live," The Compleat Gcnrlcman.
Fashioning him absolute in the most fucessary & commc~dableQualities concerning Minde or
Bodie thor moy be required in a Noble Gentleman (London, 1634). p. 2.
8 See Lawrence Stone's intensting discussion of the rise of the companionate marriage, The
Family. Sex and Marriage in England 15W-1800 (New York: Harpu and Row, 1977). pp.
221-69.
242 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION

surprisingly, in view of the heroine's many concerns about consolidating

her talents for overcoming hereditary social barriers, Pamela 11 empha-
sizes the underclass's humanity. Whenever speaking as a former servant,
for instance, Pamela readily endorses Locke's program to elevate the
upper-class child's consciousness about his or her servants' feelings and
private worlds. Likewise, as the new mistress of a squire's household,
Pamela can also share Locke's fears that too much distance between the
master and servant will result in alienation and rebellion.
Benevolence and kindness are the code words in advising masters of
the need to exercise the greatest tact in domestic management and to ed-
ucate their sons and daughters in these attitudes towards subordinates. In
the Collection, in the section based on Pamela, under "Children and Ser-
vants," we find: "The principles of universal benevolence and kindness,
especially to inferiors, should be early inculcated in the minds of Chil-
dren of birth and condition, iv. 361. [315]" (Pamela, 4:334). In the novel,
this sentiment belongs to the heroine, who points out an inconsistency
in Locke's Thoughts concerning Education, which had advised parents
to protect their children from the bad influence of servants, at least some
of whom are allegedly bound to be rude, foul-mouthed, sexually im-
moral, and politically dangerous. As if recalling her own humble origins,
she points out that the philosopher had also urged masters to feel sym-
pathy with the poor. Thus, in the Collection, under the same category,
the following sentiment repeats Osbom's advice to his son: "Domes-
tics, adds Mr. Locke, will pay a more ready and chearful service, when
they find themselves not spurned because fortune has laid them below the
level of others, at their master's feet, iv. 360. [314]" (Pamela, 4:332-
33). In the novel, while applauding this principle, Pamela argues that
masters cannot segregate their children from servants "without render-
ing them odious or contemptible to them [the children] ... and thereby
cause them to treat them with [quoting Locke] 'domineering Words, and
an imperious Carriage, as if they were of another Race or Species beneath
them'" (Pamela, 4:333).
In this discourse on power relations within the family, kindness is
invoked nervously to overcome the potential hazards of distance that pri-
vacy and arbitrary social privilege entail. In the Collection, in the section
on Pamela, under "Servants," we find: "The reputation of the principals
of families lies more at the mercy of their Servants, than is generally con-
sidered, iv. 58 [48]." Politically, in other words, it makes sense to govem
one's servants as well as possible, lest not only the individual household
be exposed to scandal but also the social hierarchy be undermined as well.
244 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION

In the novel, Pamela's success in high life depends greatly on reconcil-

ing her servants to her fortuitous ascendency: "And so she has escaped,
as she ought to escape, the Censure of Pride; and has made every one, in-
stead of reproaching her with her Descent, find those Graces in her, which
turn that very Disadvantage to her Glory" (Pamela, 450). Later, after
having adopted her husband's illegitimate daughter, as part of her do-
mestic reforms Pamela instructs Sally Godwin in the gentle governance
of servants (Pamela, 4:278-79). In the Collection, under "Servants," in
the section based on Pamela, we find:

Servants who will do their duty with kind words, ought not to be treated with
imperious ones, iv. 302 [263].
The mistress who speaks as haughtily to Servants on common as on extraordi-
nary occasions, when they do amiss, weakens her own authority, and will be
regarded no more in the one case, than in the other, iv. 303 [263].

What is evident in such observations is the lurking sense that those

working below need to be persuaded into doing their duty, and that,
in short, the chain of command in the family-and implicitly in the
society as a w h o l e c a n n o t be taken for granted as a divinely preordained
hierarchy.

In keeping with the "family romance" of Richardson's last novel, the en-
tries in the Collection that reaffirm the spiritual responsibility of the
master are derived mostly from Sir Charles Grandison. Thus, under
"Masters. Mistresses. Servants," we find:

Generally speaking, a Master may make a Servant what he pleases, iii. 352. [iv.
1381.
Servants judge by example, rather than by precept; and almost always by their
feelings, iii. 352. [iv. 1381.

In the novel, in response to his uncle Lord W.'s observation, "A servant
of yours, Sir Charles, looks as if he would one day make a figure as a
master," the hero explains his devices for procuring a magical hegemony:
"I always insist upon my servants being kind and compassionate to one
another. A compassionate heart cannot habitually be an unjust one. And
thus do I make their good-nature contribute to my security as well as
 M A S T E R S A N D SERVANTS: POLITICAL DISCOURSE 245

q ~ i e t . "Just
~ as Pamela manages her servants by the "force of example,"
so the master of Grandison Hall imbues his household with magnanimity.
But a refinement on the wish-fulfilment represented in the first novel is
the "sentimental" interaction between the servants themelves. Once again
"being kind and compassionate" is the crucial principle of harmony, but
it no longer applies simply to the attitude of master to servant, and vice-
versa. Control over servants by manipulating their feelings towards one
another, however, is no less self-interested than Pamela's governance.
Benevolence is not an unconditional virtue here that is required of all
Christians; rather, it is a pragmatic policy: "And thus do I make their
good-nature contribute to my security as well as quiet."
Besides instilling generous feelings in all ranks, the ideal patriarch
should promote religion in his house, no matter what the particular
doctrines:

A truly religious Servant, of whatever persuasion, cannot be a bad one, iv. 224
[v. 951.
A good Master, if his Servants live but up to their own professions, will in-
dulge them in all reasonable opportunities of pursuing the dictates of their own
consciences, iv. 224 [v. 951.

Despite the bland tone of these maxims in the Collection-part of the

conduct-book tradition on godliness in the home-they have a much
greater political impact in the novel. Uttered by Sir Charles in Bologna,
while demonstrating to the Marquis and Marchioness the tolerance of
Protestant masters in contrast to their Roman Catholic counterparts, who
insist on their servants' belonging to the same faith, these sentiments ap-
pear to reaffirm for Richardson's first readers the wisdom of the Glorious
Revolution in 1688 and its continuance under the Hanoverian dynasty.
If the goodness of Sir Charles is registered by the cheerful obedience
of his servants, the worthiness of Harriet as his wife depends on a similar
talent in managing the women-servants in the house. By subtle contrast
with Emily Jervois, who "loves to sit up late, either reading, or being read
to, by Anne; who, tho' she reads well, is not fond of the task," Harriet
Byron, while visiting Sir Charles's ward late one night, demonstrates her

9 Richardson, Sir Chorles Grandison, ed. lacelyn Hanis, 3 vols (London: Oxford University h s .
1972), 2353, 354. References are to this edition. In the Cottection, Richardson describes the
references to Grandison as follows: "The Numerals, i, ii, iii, &c. denote the Volumes; the first
Figurw refer to the Octavo Edition; those inclosed thus [ I to the First and subsequent Editions
of the Twelves" (Collection, p. 217).
246 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION

superior wisdom in governing the house: "You must then let your Anne
go to bed, said I: Else, as her time is not her own, I shall shorten my visit.
I will assist you in any little services myself. I have dismissed Jenny [i.e.,
set her free for the night]" (Grandison, 3:32). Thus, although a sentiment
from the Collection about servants having the same feelings as masters
may appear to anticipate Beaumarchais's politically subversive comedies,
in Grandison such a statement is usually invoked to represent the master's
and mistress's benevolence and kindness, qualities that presumably apply
both to ruling a naturally divided nation effectively and to running the
microcosm of the country house.

In view of Lovelace's ease in bribing and manipulating servants to de-

ceive the heroine, the action of Clarissa would not at first seem conducive
to the reader's placing much confidence in them; nevertheless in the sec-
tion on this novel, under "Masters. Mistresses. Servants," the Collection
offers the following two ostensibly generous concessions to the labouring
poor:

People in low stations have often minds not sordid, ii. 59. [150].
Take number for number, there are more honest low people, than high, ii. 59.
[150].

As we have seen above, despite the apparent "sentimental" championing

of the poor here, in the context of the novel these sentiments serve rather
to portray Clarissa's noble consciousness than to give very much credit
to the lower classes. In fact, Clarissa is comparing her own situation-not
being trusted by her family-to that of servants who lose their credibility.
The heroine's insight into how servants feel is derived from her having
been deprived of her given role as mistress in the house:

But I have seen, among the most ignorant of their class, a susceptibility of
resentment, if their honesty has been suspected: And have more than once been
forced to put a servant right, whom I have heard say, That, altho' she valued
herself upon her honesty, no master or mistress should suspect her for nothing.
(2: 150)'O
LO Richardson, Clorissa. Or. The Hislory of o Young Lndy, inm. Plarian Stuber, a facsimile of the
3rd edition, 8 vols (New York: AMS Press, 1990). References in parentheses are to this edition.
In the Collccfion, Richardson describes the rcfennces to Clarisso ss follows: "The Numerals, i.
ii, iii. k c . denov the Volumes; the first Figures refer to the Octavo Edition; those inclosed lhus
II to the 3d and subsequent Editions of the Twelves" (Collecfion, p. 85).
 M A S T E R S A N D S E R V A N T S : POLITICAL DISCOURSE 247

While being kept under constant surveillance by her brother and sister,
Clarissa goes on to describe all the various ruses she must adopt in order
to exchange letters with Lovelace in the garden. Once having lost the
family trust, Clarissa, in other words, must behave like any low-class
servant in deceiving her master and mistress.
As if to discredit any democratic notions about the lower classes, in
a long passage added to the third edition Richardson shrewdly gives his
libertine the office of outdoing even Clarissa's generous attitude towards
them:

Were it not for the Poor, and the Middling, Lovelace says, the world would
deserve to be destroyed, iii. 189 [321].

Whether Richardson himself would have dared to express such hostil-

ity towards the aristocracy so freely is doubtful; instead, the ventriloquist
could safely relegate this hyperbole to the libertine's manic, if perceptive,
loose discourse throughout the novel. As found in the Collection, with-
out the identification of Lovelace as speaker, the sentiment might have
come from Rousseau or Voltaire. In the novel, however, it occurs al-
most spontaneously in the midst of Lovelace's instructions to his cohorts
on their proper roles when inhoduced to the deluded Clarissa at Mrs Sin-
clair's. Lovelace's original intention here is to confront the upper-class
rakes with their debt to the poor and powerless, whose virtue alone had
presumably kept God from destroying the world by fire long ago.
In one of the many significant passages "restored" to the third edition
of Clarissa, Lovelace's sentiment is even more radical than it appears in
the Collection and deserves quoting in its entirety:

She must have some curiosity, 1 think, to see what sort of men my companions
are: She will not expect any of you to be saints. Are ye not men bom to
considerable fortunes, altho' ye are not all of ye men of parts? Who is it in
this mortal life, that wealth does not mislead? And as it gives people the power
of being mischievous, does it not require great virtue to forbear the use of that
power? Is not the devil said to be the god of this world? Are we not children
of this world? Well then! Let me tell thee my opinion-It is this, That were it
not for the Poor and the Middling, the world would probably, long ago, have
been destroyed by Fire from Heaven. Ingrateful wretches the rest, thou wilt be
apt to say, to make such sony returns, as they generally do make, to the poor
and the middling! (3321)

To set the principles of virtue and labour against the feudal hereditary
right to power, poor and middling are code terms of a bourgeois rad-
248 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION

icalism that apply more to the author's own social class than to the
needy lower classes." Ostensibly, of course, it is Lovelace's exaltation
of Clarissa in this scene that accounts for his passionate condemnation of
his fellow rakes. Layers of texts are juxtaposed in this remarkable para-
graph, including Swiftian irony and Puritan sermon, to render Lovelace
speaking with a forked tongue in this repudiation of his privileged class.
As usual he prepares a scenario to lure Clarissa into his confidence. An-
ticipating her interest in meeting his friends if only to know him better,
Lovelace instructs the libertines Belford, Mowbray, Belton, and Tourville
in the proper behaviour when admitted "to the presence of his Goddess"
(3:317). He tells them bluntly that Clarissa cannot expect them to be
"saints" because they are all rich and thus have the power to indulge
themselves in sinful pleasures beyond the reach of the poor.
Most astonishing here is his emphasis on the inherent guilt that comes
with wealth. Instead of condemning the libertines for their immorality
as individuals, Lovelace parodies the language of the ascetic contemptus
mundi tradition against the world, flesh, and devil, which incriminates
the whole class of aristocrats because of their hedonistic power. Here, as
elsewhere in.Clarissa, Lovelace has the gift of moral discourse, but lacks
the strength of conviction to act upon his insights. Even while admitting
that the lower classes deserve better treatment because of this mythical
dispensation, he goes on with his plots to exploit them anyway. It is
this double consciousness about the destructive enticements of desire
that makes Lovelace both more sympathetic and more culpable in his
villainy.
Despite all the liberal utterances in Pamela and Grandison about man-
aging employees humanely, Richardson leaves no doubt that servants are
to be regarded as spies, at least potentially, and should be ruled with the
greatest caution. Perhaps from his own experience as an employer and
suburban emulator of the gentry, he could imagine the problem of an in-
ept country squire like Mr B. in trying to cope with the democratic forces
unleashed by Pamela's ceaseless pen. In the Collection, under the head-
ing "Masters. Mistresses. Servants," derived from Clarissa, for example,
one proposition begins with the assumption that servants are natural ene-
mies and need to be held aloof accordingly. For whatever reason, they are
11 On the encoding of the term virtue and labour in opposition to hereditary right to'power, see
I.G.A. Pocock, Virtue. Commerce,andHistory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
especially "Wrtues, rights, and manners: A model for historians of political Ihought," pp. 37-
50. See also Isaac Kramnick, Republicanism and Bourgeois Rodicolism: Poliricol Ideology in
Lare Eighteenth-Century Englond and America (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
1990).
 M A S T E R S A N D SERVANTS: POLITICAL DISCOURSE 249

prone to conspire against their masters: "Servants united in one cause, are
intimate the moment they see one another, iv. 329" [v. 165, 1661. In view
of the inherent tensions in these power relations, it is evident that body
language is more significant than words for effective communication and
control:

Servants often make excuses for faults with such looks, as shew they believe
not what they themselves say, vi. 250 [vii. 1731.
The art of governing the under-bred lies more in looks than in words, vi. 260
[vii. 1831.

Although when baldly abstracted from Clarissa as propositions about the

world these statements appear to be of the same fabric, originally they
belong to quite different voices in the novel, in a running debate about
how to govern servants well, not so much for the sake of the servants
themselves as for justifying the authority of those in power.
In the original context of these sentiments in Clarissa, the discourse
on domestic governance reveals three positions: Belford's, who treats his
servants with "kindness" and uses obsequious language in his commands;
Mowbray's, who forces servants into obedience by constant threats of
physical violence; and Lovelace's, who resorts to Machiavellian princi-
ples of persuasion through the tactics of both fear and bribery. On the
face of it, after readily dismissing Mowbray's crude exertion of power
as being beyond civilized society, we might surmise that Belford's "sen-
timental" position should be the norm here. But a closer examination of
the context of this debate will show, I believe, that in the real world rep-
resented in this novel, Lovelace's views of governance carry far more
weight in practice.
What occasions the sentiment about servants' glances contradicting
their words, quoted above, is Belford's report of how his drunken ser-
vant Harry had failed to deliver Lovelace's letter the night before. Belford
confesses here that in contrast to Lovelace and Mowbray he has been too
lenient with his two servants, Hany and Jonathan, and that consequently
he has lost their respect. Because of Harry's failure to give Belford the
letter, Mowbray is kept waiting until Belford can finish the letter be-
ing written at this moment. Mowbray, "who is impatient to exchange the
company of a dying Belton, for that of a too lively Lovelace, affixed
a supplement of curses upon the stareing [sic] fellow, that was larger
than my book-Nor did I offer to take off the Bear from such a Mon-
grel, since on this occasion, he deserved not of me the protection which
250 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION

every master owes to a good servant" (7:173). Describing Mowbray's

verbal and physical abuse of this servant below his window, Belford re-
marks with Hogarthian subtlety that the real victim of this altercation
is the poor horse on which Harry finally vents his own frustration. The
point is that all beasts of burden, not just servants, must bear the brunt
of tyrannical power. Despite the distraction of Mowbray's loud minis-
trations, however, the fact remains that Belford's "kindness" in trusting
his servant's humanity has resulted in a dereliction of duty.
The sentiment about using looks more than words for controlling
servants, quoted above, exemplifies Lovelace's confidence in his own
system, which is probably closer to such political realists as La Rochefou-
cauld and Lord Halifax than has previously been recognized:I2

I am fit to be a Prince, I can tell thee; for I reward well, and I punish seasonably
and properly; and I am generally as well served as any man.
The art of governing these underbred varlets lies more in the digniry of Looks
than in Words; and thou art a sony fellow, to think humanity consists in acting
by thy servants, as men must act who are not able to pay them their wages;
or had made them masters of secrets, which if divulged, would lay them at the
mercy of such wretches. (7:183, emphasis mine)

In another scene, the one at Hampstead, wherein the Widow Bevis poses
as Clarissa, it is again the "kindly" treated and loyal servant who tums out
to be a dupe to the libertine's unscrupulous hirelings and consequently
endangers the very person he had intended to protect."
In contrast to Osbom's or Locke's relatively relaxed feelings about ser-
vants, the Richardson who wrote Clarissa expressed deep anxiety about
ever being very open to these lower class members. Secrecy, not trust, is
the main theme in the section from Clarissa, under "Masters. Mistresses.
Servants"; and as usual the "normative" statement does not belong ex-
clusively to any one character: "A Master's communicativeness to his

12 Compare La Rnhefoucauld: Maxim 257: "Gravity is an Affectation of the Body, put on to

conceal the defects of the Mind." Discourses on the Deceitfulness of Humom Virtues.By Mon-
sieur Esprit. ... To which is added The Duke de lo Rochefoucaull's Moral Reflections (London,
1706), p. 48. Halifax is more positive than La Rochefoucauld but no less political: "Be not
too hosty in giving your Orders nor loo angry when they are not altogether observed: much
less are you to be loud, and too much disturbed: An Evenness in distinguishing when they do
well or ill, is that which will make your Family move by a Rule, and without Noise," Miscel-
lonies By the most Noble George Lord Soville. Late Marquis and Eorl of Hnlifar, third edition
(London. 1717). p. 39.
13 See my essay 'Truth and Storytelling in Clorisso," Samuel Richardson: Tercentenary Essays,
ed. Margaret Anne D w d y and Peter Sabor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Ress, 1989), pp.
47-28.
 M A S T E R S A N D SERVANTS: POLITICAL DISCOURSE 251

Servants, is a means for an enemy to come at his sercrets [sic], ii:226."

[309]. Although Lovelace might have said as much, in the novel it is
actually Clarissa who observes that he has been too open with his ser-
vants and thus has become vulnerable to the spies the Harlowes set
upon him. As usual a sentiment expressed in the novel serves a dramatic
purpose and thus may differ in meaning or emphasis from a similar state-
ment in the Collection: far from being carelessly intimate, Lovelace has
deliberately told these stories to his servant-the double agent, Joseph
Leman-to increase the Harlowes' pressure on Clarissa and thus to in-
crease the chance of her going off with him. While Clarissa womes
about Lovelace's supposed negligence towards his servants, Joseph Le-
man is gaining the Harlowes' trust and secretly lying about her tempting
him with "a Bribe [which she never offered] to convey a Letter [which
she never wrote] to Miss Howe; he believes, with one inclosed (per-
haps to me): But he declined it: And he begged they would take no
notice of it to her" (1:235).
At other places in the novel, Lovelace's complaint that the up-
per classes are ever threatened from below is essentially the same as
Clarissa's: "Servants seldom keep their Master's secrets from one an-
other, be those secrets of ever so much importance to their Master, iii.
13 [157]." This agreement about the essential need in masters and mis-
tresses to keep their private affairs secret from their servants is shared by
the middle classes as well as by the gentry and aristocracy. Granted the
situation in the families represented in Clarissa, the effectiveness of au-
thority depends on keeping a safe distance from those below. While
servants are often allowed a voice in the representation of their so-
cial world-whether in novelistic fiction, on the stage, in newspapers,
or in ordinary letter-writing-those at the controls of the printing press,
including Richardson, knew enough to suppress the inevitable "sauci-
ness" of the marginal caste as a constant threat to an arbitrary political
order. Thus, although at first glance Pamela may appear to give demo-
cratic expression to the working poor, from the beginning we know that
the heroine was not born to be a servant.14

Richardson's sentiments on domestic duties, then, reveal a curious in-

14 Bruce Robbins's observation that Richardson avoids a "class-based distinction of dialect" in
the "quibbling, wordy battles between Pamela and her master" implies. I believe, the author's
intention of rendering the heroine a lady born rather than a servant, The Servant's Hand, pp.
79-80.
252 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION

consistency between a pragmatic stress on manoeuvring servants into

compliance with the master's will by the application of benevolence and
kindness, on the one hand, and a paranoiac fear of their predilection to
cheat and to subvert the master's authority, on the other. If the great
law of subordination was still officially in place, servants in the fam-
ily did not perform as if they subscribed to it unless their master set an
example to inspire their deference. To a large extent, Richardson's sen-
timents on this topic echo the political discourse of his age, with all its
contradictions about social subordination and equality.
But another reason for the apparent discrepancies in the Collection,
we have seen, is that as "editor" and "compiler" Richardson intended
a polywcal text in the first place. The generic tensions between his
moral dictionary and his novels also complicate the author's mimetic
purposes. What occasions the sentiments within the novels often allows
meanings very different from the extracts alphabetically arranged suh-
sequently in the Collection, and conversely. Statements about SeNants
in the dictionary may turn out to be derived from a character's recogni-
tion that other persons, including paid subordinates, cannot be trusted in
a world where amour-propre is the p ling principle. Again, what is said
about servants in the novel may have the primary purpose of showing
that the speaker has the capacity to govern a house well. Some remark-
ably democratic sentiments in the Collection about the propensity of the
under class towards honesty, we have also seen, are discovered in the
novel's original context to be only a dramatic moment for invoking a
primitivistic foil to the vices of the wealthy and powerful. It cannot be
ruled out, however, that Richardson also wanted to challenge the reader
of the Collection with radical, even revolutionary, thoughts on the dis-
enfranchised as a "strategy of containment" while endorsing elsewhere
the status quo.

University of Illinois, Urbana