03/06/2018 Reading the epistolary novel: Samuel Richardson's 'Sir Charles Grandison' - Literature of the English Country House

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Reading the epistolary novel: Samuel Richardson's 'Sir Charles

Grandison'

The following extract comes from a letter in the seventh (and final) volume of Jane Austen’s
favourite novel, Samuel Richardson’s ‘The History of Sir Charles Grandison’ (1753-4).

The novel is epistolary in form (written entirely in letters) and in this letter the heroine, Harriet
Byron, is describing being shown round Grandison Hall by the hero Sir Charles, to whom she
is now engaged.

Once you have read the extract, consider the following questions and discuss your answers
with your fellow learners:

How does Harriet convey her feelings on being shown round the family seat? How
would you describe the language that she uses?
What are the advantages of the letter form for expressing Harriet’s feelings? What kind
of a relationship is built up with a) her correspondent and b) the reader?
On the basis of this letter, how do you think you would feel about reading a seven-
volume epistolary novel such as this?

Extract from Vol 7, Letter VIl

Sir Charles, by Lucy, invites me, till dinner is ready, to walk with them, at her
request, in the gallery. Lucy wants, in describing that gallery, to give you, my
dearest grandmamma (in whom every other of my friends is included) a brief
history of the ancestors of Sir Charles, whose pictures adorn it. I come! Lord of my
heart! I attend you! -

How, madam, would you have been delighted, could you have sat in this truly-
noble gallery, and seen the dear man, one arm round my waist, pointing
sometimes with the other, sometimes putting that other arm round my Lucy’s, and
giving short histories of the persons whose pictures we saw!

Some of the pictures are really fine. One of Sir Charles’s, which is drawn when he
was about sixteen, is on horseback. The horse a managed, curvetting, proud
beast. His seat, spirit, courage, admirably expressed: he must have been, as his
sisters say he was, the loveliest, and the most undaunted, yet most modest-
looking, of youths. He passed his own picture so slightly, that I had not time to take
in half the beauties of it. You will not doubt, madam, but I shall be often in this
gallery, were only this one picture there.

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03/06/2018 Reading the epistolary novel: Samuel Richardson's 'Sir Charles Grandison' - Literature of the English Country House - The Univers…

What pleasure had I in hearing the history of this ancient family, from this
unbroken series of the pictures of it, for so many generations past! And will mine,
one day, thought I, be allowed a place among them, near to that of the most
amiable of them all, both as to mind and figure? How my heart exulted! What were
my meditations as I traced the imagined footsteps of dear Lady Grandison, her
picture and Sir Thomas’s in my eye! as finely executed, as those in the best bed-
chamber. May I, thought I, with a happier lot, be but half as deserving! But,
madam, did not Lady Grandison shine the more for the hardships she passed
through! And is it necessary for virtue to be called forth by trials, in order to be
justified by its fortitude under them! What trials can I be called to with Sir Charles
Grandison? But may I not take my place on the footstep of her throne, yet make
no contemptible figure in the family of her beloved son? I will humbly endeavour to
deserve my good fortune, and leave the rest to Providence.

There are in different apartments of this seat, besides two in the house in town, no
less than six pictures of Sir Thomas: but then two of them were brought from his
seat in Essex. Sir Thomas was fond of his person: they are drawn in different
attitudes. He appears to be, as I always heard he was, a fine figure of a man. But
neither Lucy nor I, though we made not the compliment to Sir Charles, you may
suppose (who always speaks with reverence and unaffected love of his father)
thought him comparable in figure, dignity, intelligence, to his son.

We were called to dinner before we had gone half-way through the gallery.

We had a crowded church again in the afternoon.

(Text reproduced from Samuel Richardson’s ‘Sir Charles Grandison’, 1754.)

© The University of Sheffield

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