John Cleland Plays Dead?

5
Sep
2024

John Cleland Plays Dead?

John Cleland, Peter Sabor, Richard Terry, Helen Williams

John Cleland, best remembered as the author of the erotic novel Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748-49), was a tricksy and entertaining correspondent. His letters, just published by Cambridge University Press, reveal his attempts to insinuate himself with the rich and powerful at the same time as he teased them for what he perceived to be poor political judgement. His famously strained relationship with his own mother is one of the most fascinating family dramas of the eighteenth century. A series of letters until now unpublished shed new light on what may have been Cleland’s attempt to fake his own death to prompt a reconciliation with his estranged parent.

As an extravagant spender and self-confessed libertine, Cleland did not inherit the family wealth upon his father’s death. Instead, his mother, Lucy Cleland, retained her hold of the family’s accounts and carefully limited her son’s access to her finances. This caused a rift which would ultimately never be healed, made worse by Cleland’s hurtful and abusive letters, which his mother finally decided to stop opening and referred to a third party. Cleland begrudgingly accepted an allowance, though he was prevented from using it to raise capital. Afraid that she might bump into her difficult son at the bank, Lucy allowed the sum to be paid to a proxy on his behalf.

In a steady stream of letters to his mother, Cleland continued to complain about his supposed ill-treatment until the death of his aunt, Lady Allen, in March 1758, upon which he went to an extreme. He sent his mother some condolences which soon veer into self-pity at his suffering from illness:

My now sincerest wish is that the news of my own death may soon compensatively comfort you for that which you are now lamenting. 6 March 1758, John Cleland to Lucy Cleland, The Morgan Library, MA 4647.11.

Cleland seems to think that his death would somehow assuage his mother’s grief, the expression of which, in light of what follows, may be interpreted as a veiled threat.

We include in our edition some hitherto unpublished letters from the circle of the French spy, Thomas Pichon or Tyrrell, who, in exile in London, somehow became friendly with Cleland. There was a family link between them. The closest friend of Pichon’s mistress, Madame de Beaumont, was Lady Frances Mayne (née Allen), Cleland’s cousin and his mother’s heiress. Like his mother, the Maynes also seem to have kept Cleland at arm’s length. In reading the correspondence of Frances Mayne – the golden girl of this story – we learn that Cleland – as threatened – is rumoured dead:

on persiste a m’assurer qu’il est mort mais que les Gens chez qui il logeoit le cache pour certaine Raison nous en avons memes des indices preque assurés & il est important de les verifier s’il est possible.

People continue to assure me that he is dead, although those with whom he lodged are covering this up for a particular reason. We even have almost certain proof of his death, and it is important to verify this as soon as possible. [September 1762], undated letter from Frances Mayne to Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Vire 165 (B 14), III, f. 43.

The particular reason was, of course, financial. Cleland’s allowance continued to be claimed. This description of events chimes with ‘an incident of some importance’ — the bouncing of a banker’s draught — that prompted Cleland to renew contact with Edward Dickinson, the family’s mediator:

M^rs Cleland had expressed some doubt of my being alive: a doubt, which might perhaps by a person who had any interest with her, be improved into some ouverture of reconciliation, a happiness of which you are very sensible, you once gave me hopes. 23 September 1762, Edward Dickinson to John Cleland, The Morgan Library, MA 4647.19.

As a Cleland scholar I had read the above letter somewhat tongue in cheek, in that Lucy Cleland’s doubts may have been referring to a lack of contact between herself and her son: she had recently been left in peace to a degree that made her uneasy. The newly-published French material demonstrates that she did, in all seriousness, believe him dead, and sent her family upon two occasions to discover the truth. It adds intriguing detail to this incident, especially when we consider how quickly Cleland moves to request a reconciliation through Dickinson. Was he really testing out a theory that she would be sorry when he was gone?

We have been able to piece together the surviving fragments of this fascinating story through editing not just the letters to and from Cleland but also those concerning him, like that of Frances Mayne cited above. Through this broader context, as well as the will of Lucy Cleland which we publish as an appendix, with its astonishing number of codicils aiming to prevent her profligate son from borrowing against his inheritance, we present a wide range of archival materials that bring to light new attributions to and new narratives about one of the most notorious literary figures of the eighteenth century, not least of which is the painful and at times dramatic relationship with his mother.