Frontispiece to The Life of Pamela

Everyman's Pamela

 Life of Pamela, a serial published in 1741, provided the reader with five hundred pages of text, nine narrative illustrations and one frontispiece for the affordable price of 4s.

John Carwitham, a little known but fairly talented illustrator, provided the images for Life of Pamela. Keymer and Sabor point out that the selection of an obscure artist was reflective of the book’s intended audience: ‘The expense of a more prestigious artist would have been too great for the downmarket Life of Pamela, but Carwitham’s illustrations are surprisingly effective. Although most of them depict scenes from Richardson’s Pamela, two represent incidents created by the author of the Life.’

This work that the frontispiece introduces, The Life of Pamela, was one of the earliest works deceitfully masquerading as the ‘true’ version of ‘Richardson’s’ Pamela. The anonymous writer of the spurious publication opens with a bold statement, exploiting Richardson’s silence on the subject of authorship: ‘Whoever put together the other Account that has been published of Pamela was entirely misinformed of the Cause of Mr Andrews’ misfortunes.’ he writes. To strengthen his argument, this author also provides a more thorough explanation of Pamela’s entry into service, including details of how her parents lost money when the South Sea Bubble burst, and supplying the last name ‘Belmour’ to Richardson’s abbreviated Mr B. The Life of Pamela exploits Pamela as the framework for its narrative and then continues the story beyond her marriage, the point at which Richardson had concluded his original narration. The author clearly believed that authenticity could be achieved through detail and realism and The Life of Pamela is over five hundred pages of excessive description. In the midst of this mediocre and murky prose, there are glimmers of insight and class sensitivity, and less of Richardson’s ambiguity. The ‘sham’ Pamela is more pragmatic and socially aware; the world she lives in is harsh and limited, expressed accurately in Mrs Belmour’s condescending comment: ‘Poor child, thou canst expect no Fortune, but a good Education will do you no Hurt’.

There are touching details of the frustrations of servant life when Pamela huddles on the balcony with the other servants to wistfully watch Lord Davers and Miss Belmour at a ball. While The Life of Pamela’s Pamela is more open in her admiration for the rich than Richardson’s - lustily observing a world beyond her reach - she is simultaneously more insistent on the limits of her station. She continually refers to herself as inferior, even to the vile Mrs Jewkes, and is honest with herself about the impossibility of wedding the aristocratic man she loves. The author articulates this awareness by describing Pamela’s thought process (with a bit of hyperbole to compensate for his sub-par writing skills): ‘His birth and fortune, she knew would not let him to stoop to such a slave as Pamela, and therefore all she had to desire was to be permitted to return to her native meanness unviolated.’

Carwitham’s illustrations are in concordance with this humble, lowly Pamela, and in his depiction of her attempt to return home dressed in peasant garb, Pamela’s honesty, innocence, and ingenuousness is highlighted. In this engraving, Pamela is shown planning to return home and thus rejecting all the supplied finery from her employment at the Belmours - the trappings of a mistress. She dresses instead in her original peasant garb to emphasize her humility and her virtue. When she enters the room, she is unrecognizable to Mrs Jervis, instigating Mrs Jervis’s trick of introducing Pamela to Mr Belmour as a stranger. Mr Belmour playfully mistakes Pamela for a fictional sister of hers, and aggressively kisses her: ‘“You are a very pretty child,’ the master jokes, ‘I would not be so free with your sister, you may believe, but I must kiss you.”’ His behaviour affirms his role as villain in the romance and demonstrates the degrading treatment lower-class women were expected to silently endure. Pamela is offended by this deceit, calling it a ‘sad trick’, and both the anonymous author and Richardson use the confusion bubbling in this scene to make a more specific point about the importance of dress, its role in class distinction, and its ability to both mask and expose the inner character of the wearer. Warner further emphasizes the sheer importance of this passage and its meaning to the entire genre of novel writing, asserting that: ‘nothing within the text appears more crucial than the disguise scene in which Pamela, the woman who claims not to have read novels, acts like a heroine from one, appearing incognito in her country dress. Here is the first episode of the novel in which Pamela becomes ambiguously complicit with the codes of love, disguise, and manipulation fundamental to the novels of amorous intrigue.’

Furthermore, this scene of deceit and departure subtly foreshadows the masquerade in Pamela II, and perhaps provides a subconscious motive for Pamela’s reluctance to attend the later costume event. Here Pamela has unwittingly participated in the popular eighteenth century past time, and in one of its moste she so desires, she would be reinforcing her lowly origins and prey to sexual exploitation; this fate is confirmed in Mr Belmour’s emboldened kiss. Bucolic clothing hinted at sexual laxity, and thus in this illustration, we have a heroine snared in the trappings of her liminality.

This scene was open to a wide range of interpretations, quite frequently split along class lines. Anti-Pamelists, mostly upper class readers, pointed to Pamela’s costume as strong evidence that she was artfully teasing Mr Belmour with her virtue and simplicity, while Pamelists asserted that her clothing confusion is confirmation of the veracity of her innocence and naivete. A close examination of Carwitham’s image leaves the viewer certain of his Pamelist stance and this image captures an honest young girl, only wishing to deescape with this luxurious attire, she wouldt her outfit as puritanical, not theatrical; her manner and posture are timid, not teasing. Pamela is a child, not a coquette, both in her gullibility and her clothing choice; she is subconsciously trying to appear and act as pre-pubescent as possible. The composition also clearly separates Pamela and Mrs Jervis, from Mr Belmour, and it is the Master that leans eagerly forward, while Pamela, with slightly bowed head and averted eyes, piously clasps her small hands. This is a tender portrait of a young girl trying to escape from her beauty and the inevitable complexities of sexuality and adolescence; Carwitham answers the narrative and the readers’ question - who is Pamela? - with a visual assertion of Pamela’s integrity, innocence, and vulnerability.

While the anonymous author of The Life of Pamela expanded Pamela’s original story, other editors condensed and abridged the narrative, making it even more accessible to the lower and less leisured classes. Warner points to the social and class-based implications of reading, stating ‘spart as she came. Carwitham chooses to depict her outfit as puritanical, not theatrical; her manner and posture are timid, not teasing. Pamela is a child, not a coquette, both in her gullibility and her clothing choice; she is subconsciously trying to appear and act as pre-pubescent as possible. The composition also clearly separates Pamela and Mrs Jervis, from Mr Belmour, and it is the Master that leans eagerly forward, while Pamela, with slightly bowed head and averted eyes, piously clasps her small hands. This is a tender portrait of a young girl trying to escape from her beauty and the inevitable complexities of sexuality and adolescence; Carwitham answers the narrative and the readers’ question - who is Pamela? - with a visual assertion of Pamela’s integrity, innocence, and vulnerability.

While the anonymous author of The Life of Pamela expanded Pamela’s original story, other editors condensed and abridged the narrative, making it even more accessible to the lower and less leisured classes. Warner points to the social and class-based implications of reading, stating ‘selecting what to read, so as to emphasize one thing instead of another, being provoked by incomplete descriptions...All these practices of reading may produce a more or less “qualified” reading which in turn becomes an index of a reader’s position in the social hierarchy.’

Accompanying Images

Hogarth, The Happy Marriage - The Country Dance

 Hubert Gravelot, Pamela with Baby Billy

Hogarth, detail from Marriage a la Mode

Hogarth, The Rake's Progress

Hogarth, The Happy  Marriage - The Staymaker

Rembrandt, Lucretia

Hogarth's Lost Illustrations for Pamela

The majority of the details about Hogarth and Richardson’s arrangement for illustrating the second edition of Pamela have not survived. From the contents of Aaron Hill’s letter to Samuel Richardson, it is known that preliminary arrangements were made for Hogarth to illustrate a frontispiece for the second edition of Pamela. Hill writes that, ‘the designs you have taken for frontispieces seem to have been very judiciously chosen; upon pre-supposition that Mr. Hogarth is able (and if any-body is, it is he) to teach pictures to speak and think.’

 However, when the second edition of Pamela was published on 14th February 1741, the novel lacked a frontispiece and illustrations.

 In the introduction to the second and third editions of Pamela (14 February and 12 March 1741), Richardson added a brief explanation for the lack of illustrations to these revised volumes. He stated that there had not been enough time for the illustrator to complete the entire project, and that the few images were unsatisfactory. As there was no other known illustrator hired by Richardson, these remarks most likely refer to Hogarth:

One was actually finished for that purpose; put there not being time for the other,

                from the Demand for the new impression; and the Engraving Part of which was done 

               (tho’ no Expense was spared) having fallen very short of the Spirit of the Passages

               they were intended to represent, the Proprietors were advised to lay them aside.

Richardson justifies the exclusion of images, suggesting that it might be impossible adequately to illustrate the eponymous heroine, for every image would fall short of her perfection, elegance, and amiability.

 Was Richardson referring to Hogarth’s work when he claimed the image had not met the ‘spirit of the passage’? Hogarth was well-respected by Richardson,at first making this criticism unlikely, but Hogarth was the only potential illustrator mentioned in Hill and Richardson’s exchange of letters on the subject. The engraver and prolific journalist of the art world, George Vertue (1684-1756), does not mention the project or any scandalous fallout. From the fragments of the sparse correspondence between Hill and Richardson during the first months of 1741, Thomas Keymer and Peter Sabor posit that Richardson and Hogarth’s collaboration had failed and that Richardson was displeased with the products of his second ‘designer’.This seems entirely plausible, however, it implies that Hogarth was rejected and then replaced. The correspondence between Hill and Richardson does not provide any information about the fate of Hogarth’s proposed designs, or the attempts by the second ‘designer’, although we do learn that Richardson selected ‘Pamela sorting our her new bundles of clothing’ as the final frontispiece in lieu of the originally planned ‘contemplated suicide’ scene at the pond. Researchers have been left to wonder why Hogarth’s drawings did not make it to publication and to lament that none of the proposed frontispieces or illustrations from 1741 survive. The accepted conclusion is that Hogarth’s and other designers’ visions of Pamela were incongruous with Richardson’s image of the heroine. After all, idealism and perfection were not strong points in Hogarth’s repertoire.

The artistic incompatibility has been suggested by Alan McKillop, who claimed Hogarth’s artistic reputation as a satirist did not correspond with Richardson’s inclination to have Pamela depicted as the epitome of perfection. In fact, Hogarth later satirized one of Gravelot’s illustrations for Pamela, in which Pamela reaches out to embrace baby Billy (figure 1). Hogarth plays with this format in the last scene of Marriage-a-la-mode, and in this image, the baby reaches with outstretched arms for his dead mother, whose has taken poison upon learning of her lover’s death (figure 2). The unforgiving honesty of Hogarth’s draughtsmanship also supports this theory, and Ronald Paulson further explains this defining characteristic: ‘If Hogarth paints a wooden leg, it must look exactly and only like a firm piece of timber.’ As we have seen, Hogarth was skilled in conversation pieces, narratives series, and caricatures and it is entirely possible that he chose to take a satirical, moralizing approach to illustrating Pamela in the manner of Harlot’s Progress. Perhaps he shared Fielding’s disdain for the novel’s artificiality? If this is so, the trademark verisimilitude of Hogarth’s satirical sketches might have revealed tensions and incongruities in Pamela’s character, for if Hogarth drew a servant girl, it would look exactly and only like a servant girl, no matter how high her later status. This detail is important because the scenes that Richardson wanted illustrated -Pamela showing her bundles and Pamela contemplating suicide - capture Pamela at moral low-points, (just as the final scene of Marriage a-la-mode depicts the countess her lowest), making the heroine particularly vulnerable. Hogarth’s satirical reading of the situation would have illustrated an anti Pamelist reading of the novel, because this group of readers found the heroine’s perfection cloying, Richardson’s moralizing condescending, and Pamela’s social climbing and pretenses to virtue distasteful. To anti Pamelists, Pamela was a burlesque disguised as a moral, didactic novel. Charles Povey, author of the critique of Pamela, The Virgin in Eden, summarizes the anti Pamelist disdain for the novel’s artificiality, providing another interpretation of the burlesque: ‘Good God! What can youths and virgins learn from Pamela’s Letters, more than lessons to tempt their Chastity, those Epistles are only scenes of Immodesty, painted in Images of Virtue, Disguises in Masquerade’.

        In this reaction, Povey is essentially categorizing Pamela as a masquerade and as a burlesque. The term ‘burlesque’ was a contentious term in eighteenth-century literary discourse; Richardson’s rival, Fielding, meditated on the differences between the burlesque and the comic in his preface to Joseph Andrews, a direct response to Pamela. Fielding concluded that the burlesque was an ‘exhibition of what is monstrous and unnatural, and where our Delight, if we examine it, arises from the surprising Absurdity, as in appropriating the Manners of the highest to the lowest’. While it would be hyperbolical for modern readers to call Pamela’s gentrification ‘monstrous’ and ‘unnatural’, the narrative’s insistence that ‘ladyhood’ is a concept divorced from birth, class, and fashionability

 would have struck some contemporary readers as improbable, fictitious, and even humorous. Fielding considered Pamela a burlesque, and he retaliated with his moral comedy Joseph Andrews to usurp and destabilize Pamela. Furthermore, the word masquerade was associated with prostitution, and Hogarth made this link himself in the second plate for Harlot’s Progress - he places a mask on a small side table in Moll’s bedroom. The elements of the burlesque and masquerade that could be gleaned from Pamela may have been revealed by Hogarth’s all too honest graver. There was too much slippage, and Pamela might have been conflated with The Harlot’s Progress.

The subject matter selected for the frontispiece, Pamela Contemplating Suicide, would also have proved challenging for Richardson and Hogarth. Within a year of two of Hogarth’s incomplete Pamela project, the artist was addressing the theme of suicide in the sixth plate of Marriage-a-la-mode, which, as we have seen, was also a direct response to a Gravelot illustration for Pamela. Hogarth’s disturbing image of the self-poisoned lady’s last breaths suggest that he would have been brutally honest in portraying Pamela’s distress while contemplating suicide. Pamela’s face might have been as pale and contorted as the dying lady’s, and this would not have been in keeping with Richardson’s loft intentions. As Richardson makes very clear in the narrative of Pamela, he wanted readers to imagine the heroine as a modern day Lucretia. Pamela presents this idea to the reader in her refusal of Mr B.: “‘May I,” said I, “Lucretia like, justify myself by my death, if I am used barbarously?”’ Richardson most likely conceived of an illustration for Pamela that resembled a history painting, not a probing commentary on contemporary society - perhaps he was thinking of Rembrandt’s majestically ethereal and haunted Lucretia, 1666 (figure 3). Although Hogarth executed several large-scale history paintings, many of which he painted for the Foundling Hospital,

 this genre was not his forte. The switch from Pamela Contemplating Suicide to Pamela sorting our her new bundles implies that Richardson thought a gentler image of his heroine would be realized in a conversation piece format, and may also indicate an effort to guide Hogarth away from the satirical. Hill’s vote of confidence for the artist - ‘Mr. Hogarth is able’ - leads us to infer that Hogarth was not out of his depth.

         But a survey of Hogarth’s work that addresses material wealth from around this period indicates that it was likely Hogarth would have taken a sharp, satirical line with the fetishism of wealth implied by Pamela’s adoration of her bundles. In the construction of this scene, Hogarth could have drawn a strong parallel between the heroine and Tom Rakewell, of the Rake’s Progress, 1734 (figure 

4). In the second scene of Hogarth’s series, he captures the rake indulging in the splendors of luxury and fine clothing, along with his upper-class friends. Hogarth shrewdly satirizes the material trappings of the audience and their self-indulgent, unsupportable ways.

 This ability to satirize the behaviour and opulence of the ton was a defining characteristic of Hogarth’s work; a Miss Edwardes paid Hogarth to mock the fashions of 1741 and the result was Taste in High Life.

        We have found parallels in Hogarth’s modern moral series that give some indication of what Hogarth’s Pamela would have looked like if he worked within his strongest genre, but there is also evidence of the artist exploring themes from the novel in a less politically invigorated type of narrative painting - the Happy Marriage (figures 5 and 6). In an interesting twist, there are a few surviving oil sketches and engravings after a lost series of paintings by Hogarth that may be a direct, non-satirical response to Pamela. Paulson argues that Hogarth’s Happy Marriage was a visual retort to the success of Highmore’s Adventures of Pamela, and Bindman supports this theory.

 There are two surviving scenes, The Staymaker and The Country Dance, which seem to warmly embrace the simplicity of a bucolic marriage. In The Staymaker the wife of the squire is devotedly attended to by her servants and she is surrounded by plump, playful children. The Country Dance depicts the whole panorama of society all spinning and whirling. As Bindman observes, there is no drama, no climax, and no ironic twist. Hogarth was not satisfied with the series and it was never completed. I would like to carry Paulson’s argument that these images were a response to Highmore’s Pamela one step further and suggest that if Hogarth’s original illustrations were not satirical, then they would have resembled The Happy Marriage. If this was indeed the case, then Hogarth’s illustrations would have fallen into the disappointingly bland and cautious category of his earlier Don Quixote illustrations, further confirming that the artist’s talents were best reserved for original narratives. 

Richardson would have been well-aware of Hogarth’s Harlot’s Progress before he even approached the artist and Warren Mild raises an intriguing point - perhaps Hogarth was simply too busy to complete the project within the limits of Richardson’s schedule.

 The commission for the Pamela illustrations came only a few years after the release of Hogarth’s immensely popular The Harlot’s Progress and The Rake’s Progress, and also around the same time he was producing poignant images of London street life, such as The Shrimp Girl (1740-45) and The Enraged Musician (1741). During this period Hogarth was unable to make his own copperplates because of the high demand for his work, and in the case of Marriage-a-la-Mode, he outsourced the job to France.The failure of Richardson and Hogarth’s collaboration may ultimately have been a case of poor timing. But whether the artistic jilt was caused by incompatible artistic temperaments or bad timing, the collapse of Hogarth’s commission and the absence of any illustration in the second and third editions of Pamela opened up the novel to many possible visual representations - from Gravelot and Hayman’s rococo confections, to Highmore’s honest heroine, to Carwitham’s country girl and Mercier’s sly seductress, whom we met in the introduction. Richardson believed he needed a visual narrative with an optimistic, un-Hogarthian conclusion - a Pamela’s Progress.

Illustrated Books

A wonderful blog on illustrated books - includes Thomas Rowlandson's illustrations for Peregrine Pickle.

 I am currently working on Rowlandson's illustrations for Joseph Andrews and images of his illustrations for Fielding and Smollett are rare.

http://blogs.princeton.edu/graphicarts/illustrated_books/index4.html

'Samuel Richardson' or 'Grandfather and Grandson with Greyhound and Hoop?'

While researching portraits of Samuel Richardson, I came across conflicting attributions of an oil painting by Mason Chamberlin. A copy of Chamberlin's 'Portrait of a Gentleman sitting at a table' in the Milwaukee Art Museum has been deemed a portrait of Samuel Richardson. The sitter bears a striking resemblance to other images Samuel Richardson, corresponds with the author's physical descriptions of himself, and the book in the sitter's hand has been identified as Edward Young's Night Thoughts, which Richardson printed -  thus it seems likely to conclude that this is indeed a portrait of the author.
BUT
Lane Fine Art has a portrait by Chamberlin of a man with a greyhound, young boy, and hoop, and the sitter in this painting is identical to Chamberlin's other portrait of Richardson. Unfortunately, the book is in his hand and the elephant folios behind him are unidentifiable. Lane Fine Art uses the single portrait of "Samuel Richardson", a copy of which is owned by Milwaukee Art Museum, as a comparative image, but Lane Fine Art identifies it as a 'Portrait of a Gentleman.' Richardson did not have any male heirs (so no obviously reason to have a young boy in Van Dyck dress), and there is no record of this painting in the catalogue of Samuel Richardson portraits. Lane Fine Art initially concluded that it was not a portrait of Samuel Richardson. However, when I came across these conflicting images online, I found that the characteristic light grey eyes left me with no doubt that this is Samuel Richardson and the likeness is especially striking when other portraits of Richardson are considered. After a discussion with Christopher Foley of Lane Fine Art, we have concluded that his portrait of the man with a greyhound, young boy, and hoop must be Samuel Richardson. The question remains - who is the young boy?

I am in the beginning stages of my investigation to find out more about this 'portrait' of Samuel Richardson. There are many leads to pursue - information about Chamberlin is scarce and sketchy - but by piecing together the little information on artist, together with Richardson's descendantss wills, contemporary reports of Richardson, and his large collection of letters, I have no doubt that this mystery will soon be solved.

Click on the links to find the images:  http://www.lanefineart.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=114&category_id=3&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

and http://collection.mam.org/details.php?id=9144

Preface to 'Reading Speaking Pictures'

Below is a long overdue update on this blog. The post is a small excerpt from my first chapter on Richardson's reading communities and the idea of reading as a social, not solitary, activity in the eighteenth century. The discussion was inspired by the small aquatint designed by Susanna Highmore, copies of which are found both in the National Portrait Gallery (http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw40221/Samuel-Richardson?LinkID=mp03775&role=sit&rNo=4) and in Anna Barbauld's Selected Correspondence of Samuel Richardson.

Reading Speaking Pictures

In London’s National Portrait Gallery, as well as in the British Library’s copy of Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson (1804), there is a charming aquatint, Richardson reading Sir Charles Grandison designed by Susanna Duncombe (née Highmore), the author’s friend and correspondent and etched by Joseph Constantine Stadler. Susanna(1725 - 1812) was the daughter of Joseph Highmore, who painted portraits of the novelist and his wife in the 1740s and 1750s.

 Richardson and Susanna became acquainted through Highmore and Richardson was greatly impressed by her talents and education. Susanna quickly became an influential member of Richardson’s North End reading circle, where young, intellectual admirers of the author gathered to discuss poetry and writing Susanna was joined by other Richardson fans - Thomas and Edward Mulso, their sister Hester Mulso, Mary Prescott, and the Reverend Duncombe. Of this small group, cheekily dubbed Richardson’s ‘harem’ by some, the women were most active and beloved by the author; Richardson fondly nicknamed Susanna, Hestor, and Mary - Sukey, Hecky, and Pressy. Susanna was both a poet and an artist, but with the passing of time, she has faded into relative obscurity; she is best remembered for her illustration of the North End group listening to Richardson reading Grandison. Susanna claimed that the initial sketch was done during Richardson’s reading, but it was not published until 1804. Susanna’s illustration is simple, softly nostalgic and an obvious choice for a frontispiece to Barbauld’s romantic and laudatory biography of Richardson. But Susanna’s drawing is more than a satisfying posthumous tribute to the author and reveals important observations for scholars of Richardson’s reading circle - the specific spaces for reading, the hierarchy within Richardson’s reading community, and the physical responses to reading.

The reading circle met in Richardson’s summer-house at his Fulham, North End residence.

    The North End home was Richardson’s ‘country’ abode and the summer-house was where he spent the morning reading his manuscripts to friends.

 The summer-house was a popular eighteenth-century garden feature - it was a freestanding building that functioned as a domestic parlour removed from the main house.

 There is an inherent tension in the space; the summer-house is at once isolated from the domestic rhythm of the main building, yet also an extension of the home’s social activities. This contradiction allowed the summer-house to be multi-purpose, a site of entertaining or solitude, reading or writing. No matter the purpose, the emphasis was on pleasure and in Lipsedge’s discussions of summer-houses, she indicates that they were ‘highly personalized buildings,’ an architectural safe haven for self expression. Catherine Talbot, a Richardson admirer not depicted in Susanna’s drawing, remarked that Richardson’s North End summer-house was ‘fitted up in the same Style as his Books are writ ... Every Minute detail ... useful or pleasing,’ This draws attention to Susanna’s depiction of the North-End summer-house which is notable for its decided lack of interior decor, whether ‘useful’ or ‘pleasing.’ In Susanna’s drawing, Richardson’s summer-house is a highly un-personalized space. With Talbot’s letter as evidence, it is likely that Susanna took artistic license, erasing the interior decoration (and perhaps even remodeling the architecture) while emphasizing the collision of the domestic space with nature and highlighting the members of Richardson’s reading circle. 

In Susanna’s composition, the North End summer-house appears slightly subterranean, with steps leading down from a garden path into the main room. A study of Susanna’s diverse oeuvre confirms that she is a sophisticated draughtsman, capable of depicting convincing interiors and exteriors, and logical perspectives. Joseph Highmore was an authority on perspective - the author of an artistic treatise that re-worked Dr. Brook Taylor’s earlier theories (1763) - and it is recorded that Highmore passed these techniques on to Susanna. The depiction of the summer-house thus must be accepted, not as an faithful architectural reproduction, but as a contrived space built around and for the figures. The large door frame contains the six listeners, with only the crooked elbows of Thomas Mulso and Reverend Duncombe breaking out of the arc. The door frame acts as the transitional space between the domestic indoors and the groomed nature of the garden; the dirt path seamlessly turns into the steps that lead down into the room. The doors are pulled wide apart, emphasizing the openness and penetrability of the summer-house; the air and birdsong can waft in and the listeners can wander out. The fluidity between the indoors and outdoors in Susanna’s depiction of the summer-house illustrates a philosophical aspect of this reading space - the garden building mediates between the domestic space and nature. The embedding of the summer-house into the garden gives viewer the impression that the room acts as a shelter from natural elements, while the open door suggests that it also selectively embraces nature.

The steps down into the room also direct the viewer’s gaze back to Richardson, who is reading aloud to his small circle of admirers. From letters from Susanna Highmore, Catherine Talbot and Hester Mulso, it is confirmed that the summer-house is actually where Richardson entertained his friends, but it was also where he occasionally wrote in solitude. This reinforces the summer-house as a multi-purpose space. The flexible functions of the summer-house transform it into an exterior library; in the eighteenth-century the domestic library developed into a central space for solitary activities and social functions, particularly in the morning.

   In Susanna’s illustration, it is clear that during the writing of Richardson’s third novel, Grandison, the North End summer-house was a site for morning entertainment and not solitary writing. This transformation of the summer-house from a place of writing Clarissa to a place of reading Grandison indicates that the third novel was written in his closet and thus explains why the summer-house does not occupy Richardson’s subconscious in his final novel. It was during the reading of Gradinson manuscripts that this building moved from private to public and became the nexus for the North End circle’s literary and artistic pursuits. 

It is clear in Susanna’s illustration that the focus is on the members of the group, not the faithful reproduction of Richardson’s summer-house. With the use of line, colour (though this could be at the discretion of Stadler), ambient lighting and costume, the composition is contrived to draw the viewer’s eye to Richardson. The diagonal path that cuts through the center of the picture leads the eye directly to Richardson perched on his chair, swinging his legs as if to the rhythm of his prose. Richardson is further differentiated from the listeners by his attire - his ‘usual morning dress.’

 Richardson is wearing a banyan and a turban which were considered the fashionable garb of intellectual men in the eighteenth-century. The costume is indicative of a man at leisure and Richardson’s relaxed posture confirms that he was at ease with his visitors during these casual morning meetings. The friends are positioned in a semi-circle, each with his or her turned towards Richardson with rapt attention. Susanna has depicted each figure to make the character identifiable but the likeness is not overpowering. This compositional arrangement has the formula of a conversation piece, an informal group portrait popularized in the eighteenth century by artists such as Highmore, Hayman, Reynolds, and Gainsborough. The conversation piece reflected a shift in taste in the eighteenth-century from grandeur to the ‘poetry of domestic life’  - E.H. Gombrich describes this movement simply as a time when ‘Painters began to look at the life of ordinary men and women of their time, to draw moving or amusing episodes which could be spun out into a story.’

 It is fitting that the daughter of one of the most skilled painters of conversation pieces in the eighteenth century should use this format to depict the circle of readers. Traditionally, men were on one side of the picture and women were on the other; Susanna modifies this slightly and places Reverend Duncombe, her future husband, next to her and on the female side. Kinkead-Weekes remarks that the gender balance in Susanna’s drawing is unusual for eighteenth-century reading circles, and Pointon’s explanation of the strict compositional codes for conversation pieces confirms that this integrating of male and female is important: ‘Conversation pieces were sites for the articulation of social and familial propriety...At the same time the social situations imaged in the conversation piece constituted a network of disconnected signs relating to discourses of culture and politics.’ Susanna is not only highlighting the equality of the members, but also the casual, familial nature of their group. The modified group portrait is an apt genre for Susanna to depict her friends listening to Richardson - Edward, Thomas, and Hester Mulso look on the verge of speaking, Mary is standing up as if overcome with emotion, Reverend Duncombe is lost in thoughtful contemplation, and Susanna is sketching the scene. Susanna’s conversation piece eavesdrops on what must have been an intriguing literary discussion; it is, to use Richardson’s term, a ‘speaking picture.’

Although Richardson is the dominant figure in this illustration, there is also a personal hierarchy among the other members of the group. Susanna positions her close friend Hester slightly off the central line of the composition; Hester is the only female character to have her face depicted head on and her gaze redirects the viewer’s eye directly back towards Richardson, linking the two. Hester was a revered intellectual, beloved by Richardson and Samuel Johnson, and frequently debated with Richardson about parental control of daughters, leading him to fondly dub her a ‘spitfire.’ Susanna is not only recognizing Richardson’s close relationship with Hester, but also her own inseparable friendship. In Warren Mild’s research on Joseph Highmore, he includes several stories of Susanna’s relationship with Hester, and the girls’ friendship with Richardson. Susanna and Hester were the authors of a series of love poems written under the pseudonyms Aspasia and Stella - disapproved of by some as having lesbian tendencies. Mild describes their friendship as ‘confusing.’ Their poetry celebrating their sentimental friendship was appreciated by the other members of the North End reading circle, but Mild notes Richardson’s gnawing jealously of Hester and Susanna’s intimacy: ‘The manuscripts of theses poems were read around the circle and their friends called them by their adopted names [Aspasia and Stella]. Shrewd Samuel Richardson may have felt more than just the chagrin of a neglected old man when he chided Hester for strolling off with her Highmore.’ Richardson here displays a fatherly anxiety and indeed, the author and his members interchanged the language of friendship with the language of family, a mixing and redefining of roles and relationships in the North End summer-house.

Richardson frequently assumed the paternal role in the North End reading circle’s familial metaphor. In her biography of Richardson, Barbauld declares that the author honoured his favourite readers with the label of ‘daughter.’ Richardson’s eagerness to transform his close-knit reading circle into a familial unit is perhaps directly linked to the fragility of his own family - he lost six sons, two daughters, his wife, his father, and two brothers all within the space of two years. His role as father, therefore, had been shaken and shaped by tragedy, acting as a paternal figure among his friends must have allowed him to reclaim some of this loss. Greenstein also picks up on Richardson’s paternalistic attitude to his readers, writing that he is ‘progenitor, admirer, and at times, fond advocate.’ The family was also the preferred structure for socializing in the eighteenth-century, and Roy Porter explains the ‘extended’ definition of family and its center of control: ‘It was normal for domestic servants, apprentices, unmarried farm servants and paying lodgers to live with the family...In families, husbands ruled.'  In Grandison, Harriet Byron explains the security of socializing within such a close-knit group: “‘My Grandfather used to say, that families are little communities, that there are but few solid friendships out of them; and that they help...to secure the great community, of which they are so many miniatures.’”

 Thus, in many ways, the North End circle was a literary family, with Richardson ‘ruling’ as father and head, and the members as offspring. Richardson actions confirm that these members were also treated as family; he read aloud to them just as he did to his wives and daughters in the evening. Susanna translates the emphasis on familial relationships into the artistic sphere by using the conversation piece format, a genre traditionally use to depict families.

 Susanna’s picture is rich with the themes intimacy and interconnectedness - the two groups figures overlap and are interlinked through the flow and folds of garments - and her image goes beyond the language of family to the language of memory. The conversation piece not only honoured families but also served as a memorial to the deceased members of the family, sometimes those passed were painted into the picture as if they were living.

 The drawing was published after Richardson’s and Hester’s deaths and the emphasis on the figures of author and beloved friend is a nostalgic nod to an idealized past. Mild narrates Susanna’s emotional connection to the summer-house and the people that occupied it: ‘North End, with its gardens and walks and summerhouse, was dear to her, but most of all she would revere it for having brought together bright people who measure life by the knowledge of the heart Richardson had put into his novels.’

 Thus, Susanna’s picture is a remembrance of a past family, a time lost.