​Continued from the previous post: The letter telling poor Emily that the man she loves drowned in a shipwreck is the evil work of a friend of Mr. St. Ives. The scheming Mr. Besfield wants to tighten the net around Emily until she consents to become his mistress. When she promises to pay her aunt's and her mother's debts and then her bank goes bankrupt, leaving her with nothing, he sees his chance. Her misfortunes, she tells Besfield, “have rendered her a creature, lost to joy in this world… but she preferred imprisonment, death, all the accumulated sorrows which injustice or cruelty could devise, to loss of honour!”
   “Proud, imperious girl!” [Besfield retorts] while his eyes glared wildly in their sockets. “beware of what you do, for remember no insult to me goes unrevenged!”
    We later learn that with the connivance of Mr. St. Ives, the evil Besfield kidnapped Frederick and locked him up in a cottage. Frederick defies him: “You threaten to destroy the peace and innocence of the lovely Emily Osmond. Reptile! One glance from her eyes, beaming beauty and virtue, shall disarm thee of all power to injure her unsullied purity!"
   To hide from the villain Besfield and from debt-collectors, Emily flees to the mouldering old family castle and the affectionate embrace of the two garrulous but loyal old domestics. Naturally, since she's a heroine and they are servants, they look after her, serving her meals, etc. Not that she eats much--she's usually too upset to eat. She spends her time looking out of the window sighing, and going for pensive walks and--oh, lord--composing sonnets. Emily never volunteers to dust the library books or anything. (I know I've banged on about this before, but really, imagine being so genteel that you don't know how to wash a plate or boil an egg and just take it for granted that someone else will do it for you.)

     I’ve tried twice before to read What Has Been (1801), a sentimental novel by Eliza Kirkham Mathews (1772-1802), but couldn’t get past the trite and mawkish prose of the opening scene. The heroine, Emily, only eighteen years old, weeps at the deathbed of her sister Matilda, the last member of her family.
    “Emily! Emily!” replied the almost exhausted Matilda, “forbear to embitter the last hours of my existence by useless regrets, or vain ebullitions of passion. Alas! My sister, let not your affection for me prompt you to execrate the unhappy Herbert, for unhappy he must be, since he has… forgotten the solemn vows he once made me, and in the hour of pain and misery, left me to reflect on his broken faith. But mine, Emily, is a death of triumph, for I die innocent.”
    Raised in genteel circumstances, Emily is left alone and practically destitute.
   But once I learned the real-life circumstances of Eliza Kirkham Mathews, I harbored a soft spot for her. She actually lived through the harrowing family loss and fall from gentility to poverty that she depicts in What Has Been. After losing her father, mother, and brother, she watched her sister Mary sink into a consumptive's grave, leaving her for a time alone in the world.  She married, but poor Eliza coughed herself to death in rented rooms in York, scribbling away to the end. Okay, so she was not a great talent--she is no Keats--but the sad tale always stayed with me, and it caught Virginia Woolf’s attention as well, because she tells it in a short story called “Sterne’s Ghost” which you can read here. 

​     Mary Jane Mackenzie must have been thrilled with the positive review she received for her debut novel Geraldine. The Lady's Monthly Museum hailed "with pleasure the appearance of a tale which may be put into a youthful hand, not only without danger, but with a rational hope that its contents will make a favourable impression on the side of virtue. To this high degree of praise the novel before us is entitled; it is evidently the work of an author who units talent to sound judgment and true Christian principles.”
    Blackwood's Magazine said: "This is the best written Novel, except Anastasius, that has been published in London for several years. The conversational style, one of the best I have seen–clear, natural, and unaffectedly elegant, and full of the spirit of good society."  The Monthly Review said: "Her novel is one of the few which possess the rare merit of entertaining and amusing us, while they are devoted to a moral and religious object.” 
  Geraldine, or Modes of Faith and Practice, was published in 1820 by the prestigious publishing house of Cadell & Davies, who also published the best-selling Christian author Hannah More (and this is the publishing house that turned down Pride & Prejudice years before it was finally published).
    The novel also contains some echoes of Austen--in my opinion. Let's see if you agree.