The star of Frances Brooke’s 1777 novel is Maria Villiers, a passionate go-getter who longs to experience life outside of Belfont, the country home where she and her twin sister reside with their uncle. An embodiment of youth, she exudes energy, optimism, naivety. Her ingenuous approach to a world filled with danger and dismay reminds one of a poem by Yates: “Dance there upon the shore,” it begins, “what need have you to care for wind or water’s roar.” Adolescence is free and fun, and for its current partakers hardly the time to heed dreary warnings from adults. Thus, the speaker’s frank hypothetical: “I could have warned you, but you are young, / So we speak a different tongue.”
In The Excursion, Maria’s beneficent uncle and guardian, Colonel Dormer, does in fact express concerns about his niece’s desire to go to London. But the headstrong and wide-eyed youth, who is determined not only to make the trip but come back married and cultured, convinces him. Maria’s sister, Louisa, who is in love with a young gentleman in the country, stays put.
As one might sense, this is a novel about growing up. For Maria in particular, it’s about avoiding indiscretion and navigating the sticky social realm of high culture, where a mirage of good motives circulate beneath attractive faces and seemingly helpful chaperons. But it’s also about the interaction between adults and children. Brooke’s characters, though not always to a tee, embody the parenting and educational styles — and even the culture and geography — that have colored their early lives.
This is especially true of Lord Melvile, whose various tête-à-têtes with Maria provide much of the driving action for the novel. Young and wealthy, he’s nothing less than a heartthrob in the eyes of Maria. Upon first meeting him in London, she forms plans about their future lives together — including marriage. She spins herself up into such a tizzy about him that nearly everything she does, thinks, and feels revolves around this fantastical future union.
But there’s a problem. He doesn’t think like her. Nor does he feel like her. Though the narrator tells us that he’s far from rotten to the core, his father has raised him to believe that the human heart is powered only by selfish motives, and that the pursuit of pleasure, gratification, and personal benefit should dictate one’s actions. Unfortunately for Maria, she doesn’t have an inkling of suspicion that Melvile’s mindset might be a world apart from her own. Her endeavors with him, at first a source of almost uncontainable joy, later become a source of vexation.
But in this novel that takes place so much in the social sphere of London, her quandaries with Melvile aren’t the only hiccups in her London excursion. Upon her arrival in the big city she learns that Mrs. Herbert, a lady of her acquaintance whom she had hoped would take her under her wing, is currently in Paris. (It’s perhaps Maria’s first youthful folly in the novel, that she doesn’t inform Mrs. Herbert about her plan to come to London, deciding instead to surprise her upon arrival.) In her absence, Lady Hardy, recommended by the woman with whom Maria is lodging, becomes her chaperon.
With Lady Hardy by her side — whom the narrator describes as “vain,” “insolent,” and affording not the “minutest degree of female indiscretion in another” — Maria enters the world of the beau monde. Dazzled by it at first, she also finds herself put off by some of its members; and, in a typical moment for a youth upon going away from home for the first time, she experiences nostalgia for Belfont.
But the feeling is only temporary. Alongside Lady Hardy, she frequents operas, the theatre, card games, and more. In fact, she joins in the outward appearances of high society, and even, at the suggestion of Lady Hardy, buys new clothes and rents a fashionable carriage. Maria does so, in part, because Lady Hardy says that she can’t expect to gain someone like Lord Melvile without being a woman of fashion herself. Lady Hardy, however, is only concerned about Maria’s success and reputation insofar as it reflects well on her. Not unlike Melvile, then, Lady Blast is one of the novel’s thoroughly self-centered characters.
As expenses (and debts) add up for Maria, she finds herself increasingly faced with the not-so-fun adult task of money troubles. Her go-to solution is as characteristic of her youth and naivety as anything in the novel: sell her already written tragedy. Not only will it pay off all her debts, Maria figures, it will even provide her with additional money. It’s so naïve that it’s almost charming (and, indeed, who hasn’t been under the spell of youthful fancies). To Maria’s credit, she’s no novice with her art; she also has a completed epic and novel. And as for the tragedy, she’s envisioned her play on stage and picked out what actress she’d like to perform it.
But it’s still, of course, a completely fantastical plan. Brooke uses the artistic ambitions of her protagonist not only to illuminate a side of Maria’s character, but also to have a go at some of the topical theatre issues of her day. David Garrick, an immensely popular and influential actor and theatre manager of the 18th century, forms the focus of her biting commentary.
In the course of trying to have her play put on stage, Maria is introduced to a character who plays a critical role in the latter half of her London adventures, as she juggles finances, her relationship with Lady Hardy, and her ardent desire to marry Lord Melvile.
These youthful dilemmas of Maria’s London excursion — many of them actually quite relatable — alongside her transformation into someone wiser and more mature, make The Excursion fun to read. One might wonder, though, how much of a worthy comparison she makes to certain other female protagonists of 18th-century fiction. Though full of zest and spirit, her moments of success feel brought on more by happenstance and luck rather than her own wit or strategy.
Other aspects of Brooke’s novel also feel rather disappointing and lackluster. Maria’s twin sister, for instance — who pops in and out of the novel, and could have served as a very interesting contrast to Maria — is only cursorily developed in the novel. In certain regards, her absence from the story would not drastically change much at all. Similar things might be said for one or two other characters. Perhaps these weaknesses of the novel stem from an overarching one, which is that The Excursion can feel like a hodgepodge of interesting themes and ideas thrown into the air, without the requisite planning for how to bring them interestingly and naturally together.
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Brooke, Frances, Paula R. Backscheider, and Hope D. Cotton. The Excursion. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997.
Spectatio 