by Steven Moore
Herbert employs more original, even striking imagery throughout the novel. While Cassianus is living the pastoral life—all the major characters do likewise at some point in an effort to escape from their troubles and responsibilities—he thinks back on Cloria “notwithstanding in such a dark way as lights are accustomed to appear in a thick mist, that could not ere long but be absolutely distinguished” (43). Cloria negotiates her favors with Osiris “like one that was constrained to deal with his creditor after he was arrested” (75). Herbert notes little things, like the lighting in a room, that previous novelists tended to ignore; during a nerve-wracking night, Cloria and Roxana “both cast themselves down upon their beds without taking the pains to pull off their clothes, not believing the rest they were probably to take could merit the labor” (80). The author obviously visualized his scenes, and rendered them with telling details that bring these scenes to life. The Princess Cloria also exhibits the interiority that was creeping into the more avant-garde novels of the period. Instead of stagy soliloquies, characters in Herbert’s novel quietly think their way through various dilemmas. Cloria’s postseduction analysis is conducted alone and in silence; only after she “reflect[s] upon her misfortunes” (72) does she pull herself together and tell Roxana what happened. At one point, the narrator says Arethusius “in a silent manner uttered, or more properly thought these complaints to himself” (465, my italics), signaling a shift from earlier representations of characters thinking to Herbert’s “more proper” (more realistic) method, moving away from uttered soliloquy to interior monologue. During a surprise attack, even the inner thoughts of a panther are recorded (99)!
In addition to making his Hobbesian case for absolute monarchy, Herbert makes a case for the literary novel. His preface is a remarkable polemic in which he calls for new, higher standards in fiction. He claims he does away with “the tediousness of repartees and impertinent discourses commonly used in inventions of this kind,” and reduces the number of characters “the better to avoid confusions, by reason of several repetitions of names which otherwise must have followed, whereby the reader might have been subject to have his memory put upon the rack to find out the meaning of the story” (211, 212). As noted earlier, he shortens (but doesn’t eliminate) the lengthy recitations common to the heroic romance, frequently apologizing for the longer ones in fact, but insists on their importance “for the better method and the righter understanding of his story,” as the narrator says of one of them (531). But this streamlining doesn’t mean the author is concerned with making things easier for the reader, or doesn’t expect some effort on the reader’s part. He says he was asked to supply a key to the novel, like those that were included in later printings of most political allegories, but Herbert refused because “the story is no way difficult to be understood by any who have been but indifferently versed in the affairs of Europe, and for others of the more vulgar sort, a bare romance of love and chivalry, such as this may be esteemed to be at the worst, will prove entertainment for their leisure,” adding: “Besides, too much explanation of mysterious conceptions of this nature would have taken off something from the quaintness of the design” (212). This goes beyond the notion that any allegorical work can be read on two levels, literal and symbolic; it is one of the earliest acknowledgments that there are two audiences for novels: those who are “versed” in history and culture and can decode complex fiction, and “the more vulgar sort” (by which he simply means average readers) who are content to read at the surface level “for their leisure.” Herbert didn’t expect much from the latter, for he goes on to say: “I may make some doubt whether the harebrainedness of the present world will give leisure enough to most to dwell upon anything at all, much less to practice heroical virtues with such a constant settledness as is necessary, being the chief intention of the author (as I conceive) in writing of this romance, besides his affectionate duty to the royal family” (213–14).
Untroubled by the charges of elitism these statements might elicit, Herbert defends both the liberties he takes with history and the complexities he introduces into his novel:
But here perhaps some may wonder why the perfect history might not have been as well undertaken for their honour, as to be thus mixed with several sorts of invention and fancies that rather lead people’s thoughts into a dark labyrinth of uncertainties than instructs their knowledges how matters passed indeed. Unto which this answer must be returned: that as the intricate transactions of other places, happening not seldom at the same instant, being otherwhiles only conjectural (wherefore point of time is not always observed) though conducing for the most part to the main design, could hardly have been explained by a bare historical relation that gives no liberty for inward disputations or supposed passions to be discovered, so on the other side counsels, for the most part being given in private, much of the luster of the whole book would have been taken away tendering to the reader’s satisfaction; and more especially seeing the common occurrences of the world do not arrive always at a pitch high enough for example, or to stir up the appetite of the reader, which things feigned may do under the notion of a romance, being it hath liberty to tell as well what might have been as what was performed in reality. And this certainly made most of the ancient and brave poets clothe their writings in figures and suppositions . . . (214).
The implications of these remarks are profound, especially for the debate nowadays over the validity of “difficult” fiction. As Annabel Patterson points out,
What we witness here is the birth of the most characteristically “modern” idea of fiction, that it ought to be artfully difficult, a concept whose ultimate product will be Finnegans Wake, with its own scholarly industry and keys published, though not by its author. And what is simultaneously registered here is the demotion, into a second, inferior category, of what had previously been the primary idea of fiction, the light and popular romances that had supposedly diverted medieval and Renaissance readers. . . . The “vulgar sort,” who cannot penetrate to the deep structure of the narrative, will be, like Cromwell’s censors, excluded from the interpretive community.37 The historical romance equates seriousness with intellectual elitism, popularity with misreading; entertainment is the “worst” function the text is capable of. (197–98)
At a time when novels were still considered mere entertainment, Herbert argues (and then demonstrates) they could be art, and that art requires a different breed of reader. On the penultimate page of his “artfully difficult” novel, Herbert writes, “This now shall finish our romance, that perhaps hath too long a season troubled the reader’s patience; but as fancies are creations of our own, and therefore for the most part please with some excess, so of the other side I neither invite or compel any to the exercise” (613). Take it or leave it: this Cavalier author is not going to condescend to readers, but will follow his fancy, indulge in excess, and create a work of art that will be fully appreciated only by those willing to work at art. He metafictionally boasts how he supplants history with “fancies” throughout the novel, from mosaics “composed for the most part of natural stones, and wherein true representation any place wanted [was lacking], the defects became supplied with exquisite painting of most of the best hands of Asia” (19–20), to “a new curiosity” in the Egyptian desert, a structure “wrought with such exquisite skill” that “To describe all the particulars of this stately fabric[ation] were to enter into discourses of extraordinary protractions, since as the whole was composed of multitudes distinguished, so every division appeared a kind of miracle either of art or nature,” testifying to “the extraordinary pious intention of him who raised this stupendous work” (575). I wrote earlier that Cloria is largely about inexperienced youngsters learning to cope with the complexities of the world; analogously, the inexperienced but game reader who sticks it out to the end learns how to cope with complex fiction. In truth, The Princess Cloria isn’t particularly difficult: overly long and verbose perhaps, but worth the effort because it is easily the best English novel
since Wroth’s Urania, and arguably the best English novel of the 17th century. Shout it out: C-L-O-R-I-A!38
Herbert’s achievement is all the greater when compared to the two other major Civil War novels written at this time. Richard Brathwaite, the prolific author of The Two Lancashire Lovers, wrote a political allegory entitled Panthalia (1659) that takes a more sardonic view. Closer to a Menippean satire in heterogeneous form, it purports to be a historical treatise by one Castalion Pomerano on the troubles in Candy, complete with learned marginal notes, many in Latin. Posing as an annalist who has “historically compiled and methodically digested” (24) a variety of materials relating to the Candiot civil war, the author includes many letters and formal speeches in his pseudodocumentary, some of them historically accurate. Then he interrupts his account halfway through with “The Pleasant Passages of Panthalia, the Pretty Peddler,” the novella-length story of a woman privately engaged to a “free-bred spark” who bails on his debts (financial and matrimonial) and runs off to a garrison; running after him dressed as a man, Panthalia attracts a girl named Aretina for the usual faux homoerotic shenanigans before she gets her man—all of which functions as an allegory of the country’s political problems. After this comic-romantic interlude, the author returns to his history, now providing medieval-sounding section titles. Written while Cromwell’s son Richard was in power—in the “Advertisement” the author implies it was denied a license for publication—the novel ends with a hasty epilogue celebrating the crowning of “Charicles” (Charles II).
The formal diversity of the materials gives some interest to an otherwise disappointing novel. Since the tissue-thin allegory could be penetrated by any reader of the time, Brathwaite skimps on plot and character development. A rich royalist, his explanations for the Civil War are suspect: on the one hand, he has Panthalia blame the spoiled people of Candy, who didn’t appreciate their peaceful, prosperous lives under a monarchy and rioted for change; on the other hand, he suggests it was England’s “effeminacy” that led to the uprising. He begins his story with a stand-in for Elizabeth I, “a lady of a masculine spirit” (1), tells of politicians dominated by wives of a similar “virile and masculine valor” (24), and even reports how the coach of “an eminent peer of Candy” was hijacked by a ghostly woman who put him in his place: “for his heels were presently stuck up and hoisted to the inner top of the chariot, with his head groveling below” (249). On the following page we’re told of the prodigious birth of a girl “having two heads, two [pair of] breasts, and four arms” (250). Effeminacy, sexual role reversals, and female monsters were the least of England’s problems before the Civil War, and Brathwaite dramatizes enough machinations by ambitious courtiers and politicians to demonstrate he knows better. Admitting upfront that his account will “saucily detract” from the way Cromwell’s censors view things, Brathwaite’s combination of serious political allegory and saucy social satire is itself a kind of two-head prodigy. At best, it can be called “a promising experiment.”39
The same might be said for a more impressive effort, Aretina; or, The Serious Romance (1660) by Sir George Mackenzie (1638?–91), who, after this youthful fling, became one of the most powerful jurists in Scotland, earning the nickname “Bloody Mackenzie” for his ruthless application of the law. Like Panthalia, Aretina is a hybrid: books 1, 2, and 4 form a Sidnean romance about two traveling aristocrats, passionate Philarites and rational Megistus, undergoing typical romantic adventures. Book 3 is a coded account of the Civil War in Scotland, straightforward and historically accurate compared to the more fanciful romance section. The two stories are thematically united by the author’s concern for passion versus reason: in love as in politics, too much passion or too much reason is dangerous; a judicious balance of the two is adviced, else individuals and nations will wind up like the character in the very first sentence of the novel: “Melancholy having lodged itself in the generous breast of Monanthropus (lately chancellor of Egypt) did, by the chain of its charms, so fetter the feet of his reason that nothing pleased him now but that whereby he might please that passion, frequenting more woods than men, deeming them the only fit grove to sacrifice in the choicest of his thoughts to the worst of passions” (1; my italics). In his case, passion overwhelms reason and leaves him, literally and metaphorically, lost in the woods. At the other extreme, an inhuman devotion to reason can leave one failing to see the forest for the trees, as in the comic example of a mathematician’s account of a battle:
Sir, we marched from this city, as from the point A. (demonstrating all upon a paper) by a direct line to the citadel of Iris, as the point B., whence by a spiral line we marched to the caves of C., where we eclipsed ourselves all night; the next morning, before the Sun came from the Antipodes to our horizon, we marched, keeping the figure of a parallelogram, conducted by Megistus, Philarites, and the martial knight, who, as three lines, made a glorious triangle, whereof Megistus, as general, was the hypotenuse; in this figure we marched to the shore, where we encountered the Persians, upon whose bodies we carved hundreds of wounds in form of isosceles, scalenum, and trapezoids. (107–8)
Monanthropus’s daughter Aretina—meaning “virtuous one,” and no relation to the hoodwinked girl in Brathwaite’s novel—represents an ideal balance of reason and passion, and gradually teaches passionate Philarites that love should follow reason, not precede it in a love-at-first-sight attraction. “If ye be really distempered with that passion,” she tells him, “employ your reason” (74). She even makes him read some essays. Similarly, subjects should come to love their king after they’ve understood and acknowledged the reasons for his absolute authority over them. “Reason first, complimented by love, makes the ideal man, the ideal marriage, and the ideal monarchical set-up,” writes Irene Beesemyer in a canny essay on Aretina (57).
As the quotations above indicate, Aretina is linguistically rich, filled with “thunderbolts of wit” (214), as though Mackenzie, like his character Megistus, had “come there to make parade of his eloquence” (52). As the twin plots progress, the author inserts rhetorical showpieces, bawdy stories, parables, poems, masques, essays on political theory, all the while parading his recherché vocabulary: “postliminius,” “homologate,” “cacochimick,” and his go-to word “nimious,” which appropriately means “excessive, overmuch,” for this is a nimious novel about nimious characters. Mackenzie is a master of the extended metaphor, as in the opening sentence of part 4, which cleverly segues from the political rebellions of part 3 back to the Sidnean love stories, from the winter of tragedy to the summer of romance: “The hard-hearted ice had now dissolved itself in tears through rage to see itself conquered by its enemy the Sun, who advancing to his former height from which that rebel Winter had degraded him, was sending forth his beams in troops to subdue Winter’s auxiliaries; and in that sweet month of May, wherein the earth, as a badge of her gratefulness to the Summer, begins to put on its livery and when the air lays aside that veil of thick mist wherein it lapped itself during the coldness of Winter” (343).
Mackenzie’s Aretina is significant not only because it appears to be the first Scots novel, but more importantly because it is preceded by a preface that constitutes one of the first attempts to theorize the novel in English literature. Like the lawyer he was soon to become, the audacious 22-year-old defends his client the novel, argues for its virtuous character, and counsels other novelists how they should write in the future. During the discovery process he uncovered “thousands” of predecessors stretching back to Heliodorus, and in arguments that anticipate Barth’s “literature of exhaustion” and Bloom’s “anxiety of influence,” Mackenzie advices novelists to study precedents in order to distinguish themselves from their predecessors. Like Herbert, he also makes a case for “difficult” novels, entering into evidence the testimony of naturalists who observe those “kernels are best where the shells are hardest.” Recognizing that the novel (like the United Kingdom itself) was at a crossroads, he knew it was time to shed the “things impractic
able” and “soaring pitch” of chivalric romances, to steer the genre away from passionate romance to more reasonable realism. He examines the four styles novelists tend to use:
There are some who embroider their discourse with Latin and Greek terms, thinking, like those who are charmers, that the charm loses its energy if the words be not used in Latin. But this is as ridiculous as if one who desires to make his face seem pleasant should enamel it with red, blue, green, and other colors, which though they are in themselves pleasant, yet are ridiculous when placed there. And this is a university style, which savors too much of its pedant, and is at best but bastard oratory, seeing the scope of all orators is to persuade, and there can be no persuasion where the term is not understood. Examples of this are Browne, Charleton, etc.40 The second style is that of moral philosophers, where the periods [sentences] are short and the sense strong, and our experience teaches us that the shorter anything be, it is the stronger. This style suits best with preachers, whose it is to debit the grand mysteries of faith and religion, for seeing sentences there should be weighty, if they were either many or long, they would burden too much the hearers. The third style is that of barristers, which is flourished with similes, and where are used long-winded periods; and of all others, this is the most preferable, for seeing similitude is but a harmony, this style shows that excellent harmony and rapport which God intended in the first creation, and which the philosophers of all ages have ever since admired. This lawyers have learned from the paucity of all human laws, which makes them oft recur to that topic which teaches them to argument from the parity of reason. And in this they resemble mechanics, who by applying a cord whose length they know to any body whose length they ignore [don’t know] do thereby learn its measures also. And by this way Nathan in the Old Testament, and our savior in the New, reprimands the errors of David and the self-conceited Jews. The fourth style is where the cadence is sweet and the epithets well-adapted, without any other varnish whatsoever, and this is that style which is used at Court and is patterned to us by eloquent Scudéry. (9–10)