We’ve had heroines who were foundlings who turned out to be the daughters of Earls in previous novels, but the heroine of Mystery and Confidence really is a farmer’s daughter who marries an Earl. Ellen Powis really hits the jackpot. Constantine Mordaunt, aka Lord St. Aubyn, loves Ellen for her beauty and good principles. He is an older mentor/lover to her, teaching her about literature and art. But all is not what it seems (cue ominous music). He is haunted by some secret sorrow: “Ask not, inquire not… let me, if possible, forget the dreadful, the hateful subject…”
   The drama of the story takes place after the wedding. Ellen doesn't know that her husband is an earl until after the honeymoon; she thinks he’s simply a wealthy gentleman. Then Pinchard adds in gothic elements such as travelogue sequences, sleepwalking, and a murder mystery. 
    Ellen knows only that her husband had a first wife who died abroad, and every now and then he gets moody, breaks out in exclamations and abruptly leaves the room. Has she married a murderer or something? No, it couldn’t be. She has complete confidence in him, despite the mystery he refuses to unveil...

     I’ll Consider of It! is a strange book, but it’s a refreshing change of pace from all the deadly serious, “virtue under threat” novels that I’ve been reading lately. I should have thought of this sooner—the way to get away from stories where the plot impetus revolves around the chastity of the heroine, is to switch to comedic novels. Jane Austen, for example, wrote comedy.
     Of course, dramatic novels contained some comic leavening, usually provided by a garrulous servant who speaks with a regional accent. And comic authors still inveighed against the follies of the times. The anonymous author of I’ll Consider of It!! weighs in on a lot of topics, such as female education, boarding schools, animal cruelty, unhealthy corseting, and uncharitable people, but it is an essentially light-hearted novel. It was written in imitation of a fabulously successful book which had come out the year before, titled Thinks I to Myself. The narrator and characters keep repeating '"I'll consider of it!" on every other page, which gets tiresome. But the odd thing it, the narrator of I’ll Consider of It frequently interrupts himself to take a poke at Thinks I To Myself. I’ll get back to the strange relationship between TITM and ICoI later.
   First, let’s meet our heroine, Charlotte Clarkson, who lives with her maternal grandfather, General Littlefame, and her widowed mother. The family are neither wealthy nor of high status, but the author arranged that Mrs. Clarkson fortuitously won five thousand pounds in the lottery, which is enough to get by with a single servant and to send Charlotte to a good boarding school. Mrs. Clarkson has high hopes for her lovely daughter…

     Charlotte Summers “is perhaps the earliest prototype of this story of the lost daughter," says scholar Ruth Perry. In this novel you can find the themes and tropes which preoccupied British literature for the next century. In fact, this type of novel was thoroughly satirized by the writer Robert Charles Maturin in an article for the British Critic. This plot seems to have predominated in the latter half of the 17th century:

• Friendless, orphaned girl is thrown upon an uncaring world. Her backstory involves a lot of bad luck and death.
• She is beautiful, accomplished, devout, and virtuous.
• She fends off unwanted male attention, up to and including assault.
• She is pressured to accept an unwanted suitor, or is accused of trying to ensnare a man.
• She turns down a marriage proposal from a suitor who is much beneath her in education, intelligence, or social standing.  
• Despite her perilous or lowly condition, she refuses to marry for money, or give her hand without her heart.
• Other women are jealous and behave spitefully towards her.
• She gets into trouble with the law although she is completely innocent.
• She has to move from place to place when her situation becomes untenable.
• A happy coincidental reunion restores her to her family or to her familial rights.
• She marries the man she loves.

     Charlotte Summers may be the fortunate parish girl but her good fortune is very much checkered, as she checks all the boxes above. And even though I've just told you the plot of the book (and the plots of many other books), I'll give you a synopsis anyway. There are also some interesting questions of style, language and message to consider...

      When I finished Volume One of A Modern Incident, I was half-way through the novel and I still had absolutely no idea what was going on. No idea. So far we just had:
    Page after page of characters stammering out incoherent remarks (dashes and dots in the original):

• “Thy looks! –I feel them, --they will d---n me yet!”)
• “I cannot pray! –I will not—no—Hell is but reprobation—that is mine already—or will be soon --- ---- ---- --- --- Yet, --but him [Mr. Winstanley, that is] I now hate—I know him,--he knows not me,---no, nor my deeds.—One effort yet, to cool this burning fever, to ease this secret torture, --this---this—Oh, Mortimore! –Mortimore!—Thee!—this—and if I fail! –be they blasted in all hope, --and I!—dark perdition cover me for ever—ever--!”
• “Why Mrs. Courtney uttered such a frantic shriek, or what caused such violent emotion, the reader is left to imagine…”

    Page after page of characters harboring a secret:

• “the secrets of another are not my own.”
• "I have already told you... that I never mean to marry."

    And characters turning pale and rushing from the room:

• "With these incoherent and inexplicable words, he rushed with frantic impetuousity from their presence.”

    Perhaps a gothic novel aficionado would be familiar with the tropes and plot devices that baffled me and would figure out the Big Secret before it was revealed in the penultimate chapter, but I only persisted with the book because it was a quick read; a two-volume novel which had not been reviewed when it came out.
    And holy snapping turtles, this had some lurid stuff; at least, lurid compared to the decorous voice of Jane Austen. This has several same-sex teases, and an incest tease, and a ghost-who-turns-out-to-be not a ghost, adultery and seduction, along with forged letters and other skullduggery. Get your smelling salts out for this one.