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CMP#219  Eugenia the forsaken heroine

5/20/2025

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  This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. ​The introductory post is here.  My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. Spoilers abound in my discussion of these forgotten novels, and I report on 18th-century attitudes that I do not necessarily endorse.

CMP#219  Synopsis: Griffith Abbey (1807), by Eliza Kirkham Mathews--or not?
PictureSublime Welsh scenery
  I am examining the novels attributed to the Regency-era writer Eliza Kirkham Mathews with the help of Artificial Intelligence tools to see if I can spot any distinctive traits setting her work apart from the authors with whom she’s been confused. But first, a review and discussion of one of those novels, Griffith Abbey, published five years after her death. This novel is not extraordinarily well-written, being a yet another reiteration of the usual tale of a foundling heroine who turns out to be well-born. All the same, I found many tidbits I want to share, including a passionate editorial against slavery.
   One would naturally assume from the title that Griffith Abbey is a Gothic novel, but it is in fact a domestic-sentimental novel with just a few Gothic tickles. Austen never went near a battlefield in her books, despite the fact that England was at war with France for most of her life, but EKM includes America's Revolutionary war in her plot.
   Our story begins on the slopes of Mount Snowdon in Wales, where Ernest, a kindly old peasant, finds a beautiful little toddler all alone in a cavern...

PictureThe Bowden Children, John Hoppner
Finders Keepers
   “Ernst dropt on the bosom of the beauteous child a tear of benevolence; and, taking her tenderly in his arms, hastened home with his precious burthen” to his wife Agnes. The nearest lord, Sir Clement Griffith--that's "Griffith" with a "G"-- can’t resist offering a home to the sweet little foundling, even though he's concerned that when his son Edmund Llewellin--that's "Llewellin" with an "L"--might develop feelings for little Eugenia if they grow up together.
   You might wonder if Sir Clement placed an advertisement about the lost child in the Snowdon Herald and Gazette. No, it seems no effort was made to enquire why a polite and articulate little toddler dressed in expensive clothing bearing the initials "E.L.G." was left alone in a cavern. So Eugenia grows up in Griffith Abbey under the tutelage of Mrs. Evans, the housekeeper.
   Sir Clement's fears for his son are justified. When Edmund comes home on school holidays, he is enchanted with Eugenia. As they grow to adulthood, Edmund confesses, “in spite of reason and duty I cannot avoid loving you, in vain do I struggle…” Though he knows his father “is prejudiced in favor of high blood and sounding titles,” he vows, “no power on earth shall induce me to marry a woman I am not tenderly and unalterably attached to.”   

The impenetrable mystery revealed! In volume one?!?
    Eugenia-feels strangely drawn to a portrait of Sir Clement’s younger brother, also named Edmund, who never returned from serving in America during the revolution. Captain Griffith had married Almira Cecil, a clergyman’s daughter, and his late father had thrown him off for marrying beneath him. Sir Clement’s widowed sister-in-law also disappeared.
    O
ne day Eugenia is visiting her old friends/rescuers Ernest and Agnes when a poor old woman asks to rest herself at the cottage. She sees Eugenia, now a beautiful young woman. She shrieks and faints. When she comes to, she confesses: “As sure as I am sinner, you are the child I lost at the foot of Snowdon. Have you a strawberry on your arm?”
   “I have,” exclaimed Eugenia.
   “Then you are Sir Clement Griffith’s niece.”
   Eugenia shrieks and faints.
   We learn that this woman was the servant of Eugenia’s mother, and was ordered to take Eugenia to Griffith Abbey so she (the mother) could join her wounded soldier husband in America. But Jane had left the baby napping in the cavern, walked out to look at Griffith Abbey in the distance, and returned to find the baby gone. She ran away and didn't confess to her dereliction of duty and of course no-one knows what become of Captain Griffith or his wife.
    Now that he knows Eugenia is the daughter of his beloved late brother, Sir Clement consents to her betrothal to his son, even though he is not best pleased about first cousins marrying. Their roles in the plot thus fulfilled, Ernest, Agnes and Sir Clement all die. Sir Clement is carried away by “a violent fit of the gout in his stomach,” a disorder I’ve encountered before in these novels, and I wonder what it could be since gout is a form of arthritis caused by a buildup of uric acid. Perhaps Sir Clement suffered from kidney stones. At any rate, Sir Clement settles a dowry on Eugenia and blesses the union before he dies. Edmund becomes Sir Edmund Llewellin but he still has his education to finish, so back he goes to Oxford, leaving Eugenia, his bride-to-be, at Griffith Castle with Mrs. Evans.
Enter our villain-- “ere long this haughty beauty will sue for mercy.”
   Lord Turville, a young nobleman, meets Eugenia and falls for her but she rebuffs his overtures. Turville resolves if he can’t have her honourably, he’ll have his way with her dishonourably. He places one of his minions in the Caernarvon post office to intercept Eugenia and Edmund’s letters to one another and replace them with forgeries. Each become convinced that the other has been faithless. Eugenia pines, while Edmund handles his misery with carousing and vortexing.
   Since she thinks Edmund regrets the engagement, Eugenia resolves to leave the castle. She and Mrs. Evans take a trip to Scotland to admire the scenery. Once there, Mrs. Evans is struck with a fatal illness, leaving Eugenia all alone, and at the same time, she receives a letter informing her she's lost her inheritance because of a bank failure. Luckily, the kindly doctor who looked after Mrs. Evans in her final illness introduces her to a local landowner, Captain Donald, who doesn't hesitate to take her in. Captain Donald's lively daughter Frances loves Eugenia like a sister.
    Lord Turville traces Eugenia's whereabouts and informs her that “all the world” knows that Sir Edmund has formed a connection with “a certain young lady in Devonshire.” Eugenia believes him, but she merely responds that she wishes Edmund well. Lord Turville proposes marriage:
   “Stay, charming Miss Griffith,” returned Lord Turville, “and condescend to say if I may hope you will become my wife."
   “Never!” replied Eugenia with emphasis.
   “Beware, Madam,” said he, “of driving me to madness; you may repent it.”
   “Your threats are vain,” Eugenia answered; “no power can oblige me to marry Your lordship without my consent.”
   “True,” he replied; “but there are means of putting my hated rival, Sir Edmund Griffith, to eternal quiet.”
   “Good God!” exclaimed Eugenia, “do not endanger his life!”
 
 “It is in your power to save it,” he replied.
   “How?” retorted Eugenia.
   “By becoming Lady Turville.”
  “I have already acquainted your lordship with my unalterable determination.”
  “Then tremble,” vociferated Lord Turville. "I will be revenged.”  
​   So saying he flew out of the room, leaving Eugenia in an agony of mind, which may be imagined, but cannot be described.
Picture
ChatGPT image
PictureCastle Dunolly, Margaret Louisa Herschel
What are the odds?
    Eugenia fears that Lord Turville might carry out his threat. She's also broken hearted about Edmund. “[T]hat a man should possess her love who had forfeited her esteem, was an incongruity not to be reconciled to reason; and she flattered herself a short time would enable her to forget he existed. Yet before she closed her eyes in sleep, she offered up to heaven a prayer for his safety, and perhaps a wish of his returning love was mingled with that prayer.”
    Meanwhile, Eugenia learns there's another stray female living with Captain Donald.
   It just so happens that when Captain Donald was serving in America, he rescued a beautiful woman driven to madness by the loss of her loved one in the American war, and brought her back with him to his castle in Scotland, where she lives in a quiet wing of the castle with her nurse. She is referred to as the "fair maniac". And as it turns out, she has a miniature of Captain Griffith that she sighs over all day!. It's Eugenia's mother! Her wits are a little scattered, but who knows, with the reunion with her daughter, she may recover.
    Although Eugenia has just been reunited with her mother, Captain Donald and his daughter Frances insist on accepting an invitation from a young neighbor, Mr. Douglas, to visit his house for the day. They of course don't know that young Mr. Douglas is a confederate of the evil Lord Turville. He is a dissipated young man who had “learned to laugh at religion as a mere chimera which none but the ignorant and illiterate regarded; to consider morality unnecessary… and all the fine and social affections of the heart as merely sentimental…to recite them sounded well, to practice them was ridiculous in a man of fashion.”
    Mr. Douglas takes the first opportunity to separate Eugenia from the Donalds and drag her into the shrubbery to hand her over to Lord Turville and his minions who will carry her off. Eugenia struggles against the fate worse than death--and who should show up to rescue her, but... Edmund! All the way from Devonshire! I'd have to double-check, but I think Eugenia faints here. Let's assume she does. Edmund catches her, of course.
   Douglas turns on Lord Turville and they duel. Turville "
breathed his last, in a state of mind which makes humanity shudder to reflect on."

PictureA detail from Benjamin West's The Death of General Wolfe
Misunderstanding cleared up
   Edmund explains that yes, he befriended and helped an impoverished young woman in Devonshire, but as it turns out, the young woman--Eliza Dudley--loves someone who Edmund just happens to know. This young man, Mr. Middleton, caroused himself in a vortex and lost all his money gaming and turned highwayman. As it happens, he tried to rob Edmund before recognizing him as his old university buddy. Edmund forgave him and reunited him with Eliza so he could rehabilitate himself. Then Edmund rescues a poor man being mugged by footpads who, as it turns out, was the servant of Lord Turville and this servant happens to have the packet of all the purloined letters between Eugenia and Edmund which had been switched for forgeries. Realizing Turville's deception, Edmund frantically traces Eugenia to Scotland and, as it turns out, arrives just in time to rescue her from being abducted. They renew their engagement. But before we can have our happy ending...
   One stormy night soon thereafter, Captain Donald and his servants rush out to help the survivors of a shipwreck and one of them turns out to be--- Eugenia’s father! 
  Then we have several chapters of Captain Griffith’s backstory—how he was wounded in the American war and rescued by Logan, an extremely Noble Savage, and he lived in the backwoods with Logan and his family. Believing his wife to be dead, he then disconsolately kicks around Switzerland for a few years, before heading back to England, to wash up beside the one home in the kingdom which, as it turns out, contains his long-lost wife and daughter.
​   Now, everyone heads back to Griffith Abbey to live happily ever after!

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Robert the African
   Apart from the plot, Griffith Abbey contains several editorials, and the longest of these is about slavery. Griffith Abbey is yet another exhibit demonstrating that it was not controversial to inveigh against slavery in novels.
    Near the end of volume I, EKM devotes a dozen pages to an incident where Eugenia and her mentor Mrs. Evans, while on their way to Scotland, take pity on a destitute and homeless “African” named Robert. Eugenia hires him as a servant.
    Robert is pious, humble, and has no-one to turn to: “Me no friend, but you and the great Being… my massa, my dear massa, died in the great waters: he bought from me from cruel white man, who tore me from my native land: he kill my poor mother.” (We see here again the distinction made in this era between the heartless slave trader and the benevolent plantation owner.) 
   In addition to a dialogue between Eugenia and Mrs. Evans about racial prejudice, the narrator challenges her readers directly: “Say, ye harsh and unfeeling, ye who bear the name of men without possessing the humanity which nature pours into the breast of man, why should the darkened African excite your contempt? Is not his soul as pure, his heart as warm, as those who boast a fairer hue? Is he not ‘a man and a brother;? Has he not feelings as easily touched as yours?”
   Although EKM felt strongly enough to include this abolitionist episode, she doesn't make effective use of Robert in her story. Robert, and Eugenia's kindness to him, makes no difference to the plot. EKM gives him a sentence in her summing-up, but apart that, he goes mostly unmentioned in Volume II of the novel. “Robert still continued the faithful domestic of Eugenia, an example of steady attachment and gratitude for the services his fair mistress had rendered him.”

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Publication history
    This post is already lengthy enough, so I will share more thematic snippets from Griffith Abbey later.
     Griffith Abbey garnered no reviews when it was published.
   A year after Griffith Abbey was published in England, an American edition came out. It is likely that the American publishers did not pay anyone a penny for the copyright, and perhaps Eliza's widower, Charles Mathews, did not even know about this American edition. Pirating was a common practice in those days.
    The 1807 edition is available to read and download on Google Books.
    Pioneering book historian Montague Summers thought that the "Mrs. C. Mathews" of the title page must be Charlotte Mathews, the author of Simple Facts; or, The History of an Orphan (1793) and Perplexities; or, The Fortunate Elopement (1794). We'll have a look at that next. 

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    Greetings! I blog about my research into Jane Austen and her world, plus a few other interests. My earlier posts (prior to June 2017) are about my time as a teacher of ESL in China (just click on "China" in the menu below). More about me here. 


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