“No Common Felicity”: Britain’s Exemplary Eighteenth-Century Women

Abstract

No Common Felicity: Britain's Exemplary Eighteenth-Century Women robin runia Emma Major. Madam Britannia: Women, Church, & Nation 1712-1812. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 371 + xii pages. $110.00.As I am in manifest danger of not seeing you at Bath, I am very glad however I had hope for blessing of present time, by whose favor I have enjoyed much imaginary pleasure & have satisfaction of thinking that has once entered into Intention will in all probability proceed in time into execution, your having got so far I look upon as a great step in my Favor, thought must, or at least shou'd, forerun Action, & it seldom happens that body is long before it follows mind, at least with this opinion I continue to flatter myself & endeavor to chear up present disappointment by future hope. Dying hard may be a credit in uncreditable places, & not to squeak at hour of death may reflect honour on those whose life will yeild [sic] them none, but I confess I am too insensible to charms of Stoicism to admire so unchristian a fortitude in a Christian as that which enables people to fix their minds on lived lavishes, when every moment is of so great importance as it becomes when it brings those who are just on brink of eternity still a step nearer it.I suppose it is possible for a Christian to dye with joy, & to say with humble gratitude tho with firm reliance, with St Paul, to me to dye is gain, to those whose heart bears them witness that when they close their eyes from fading gaudiness of Worldly Vanities, it is only to open them on brightness of eternal Glory, death appears in form of a kind Benefactor not in that of a cruel Enemy, but this is no common Felicity, Few can leave this world without regret, or look on other with such firm confidence as even to exclude hope, as that implies at least some diffidence; but many can look on their dissolution tho not with joy yet without terror, can when they think on they leave with tenderness, still bless him who gave, & him who taketh away, & trust their souls with strong tho humble hope in hands of him whose will they have above all things endeavored to obey, trusting in his Mercy who has done so much for them for pardon of their very imperfect services.- Sarah Scott to Elizabeth Montagu (1758)The intensely personal and deeply felt nature of religious belief revealed in this extract from Sarah Scott's correspondence does not feature in Emma Major's Madam Britannia; however, I tantalized by its specter as I read through this monograph's exceptional scholarship.1 In above letter, we see Scott, even while betraying a keen sense of disappointment at very temporary deprivation of her sister's visit, insist on eternal value of hope to individual psyche. She links intellectual activity, principled commitment, and, ultimately, action to her Christian faith, and results is her privileging of cumulative over shortest lived lavishes of human experience. She champions a life of pride and a death without terror; these specific feelings are, of course, very feelings that bring Lamont, friend of narrator in Scott's Millenium Hall (1762), to his conversion in novel's final pages. In this text, Scott's narrator expresses his pleasure at seeing Lamont so seriously affected and relates Lamont's inspiration by conduct of ladies that showed Lamont what that religion in reality was (248). These examples of Scott's writing illuminate reality of religion in eighteenth-century Britain to be a complex web of interconnected individual feelings and beliefs acted out for a national community, very complexity examined in full by Madam Britannia.This volume tackles the version of public produced by Britannia's mixture of religion and national identity [that is] messier, more difficult to define, than versions of public often used in current discussions of eighteenth-century culture (7). …