THE LEE SISTERS:
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY COMMERCIAL HEROINES
The story of the Lee sisters is one of supreme practicality, broad-ranging talents, strength of character, and not least great entrepreneurial skills. Here were two shrewd pragmatists who used their abilities to take advantage of changing social conditions. They provided themselves with a life-style not merely reliant upon wealth, but an enjoyment of wide popularity and social position, simultaneously leading the way for the actions of a whole new generation of enterprising women.
Sophia and Harriet Lee were two among seven children1 born to professional
actors John and Anna-Sophia Lee. Their mother was of Scottish stock, born in Porto, Portugal. Her family worked in the wine trade (a fact which may throw a little light on a source of the sisters' commercial flair, but none on any previous link to their mother’s chosen profession). John Lee, alongside whom his wife so often performed, was far more accomplished on stage than she, but somewhat highly controversial off it. Born in 1725, he enjoyed a good education at Merchant Taylor's school in London. Before treading the boards professionally, he was a law clerk in an eminent London solicitor's. According to the Annals of the Edinburgh Stage by Dibdin, he appeared at Goodman's Fields Theatre in October 1745, as Conde in The Massacre at Paris, the first of numerous performances there. In 1747, having regularly appeared in many established London venues, Lee started work in Garrick's company at Drury Lane. He was considered by some as almost Garrick's equal. This was to be more the cause of problems than benefit. The rivalry from personal ambition and financial aspiration was on both sides and prompted numerous disputes. The Thespian Dictionary remarks:
This actor was not without considerable pretentions, but they were greatly allayed by his vanity. He had a good person, a good voice, and a more than ordinary knowledge in his profession, which he shewed without exaggeration; but he wanted to be placed in the chair of Garrick, and, in attempting to reach this, he often deranged his natural abilities.2
In a move that upset Garrick, Lee deserted Drury Lane for the rival Covent Garden, with money and professional opportunity thought sure to be behind the change. Although very successful here, he was forced back to Drury Lane by Garrick when it was proved he had breached his articles. In April 1752, Lee completed this stormy contract and went to join his wife at Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin. But having played just one performance (Romeo to Anna-Sophia's Juliet), he took off for Edinburgh to accept a position as manager of Canongate Concert Hall, charged with raising it from ‘decay’.3 There is no
doubt that John Lee was pretentious and egotistical. There is little argument too he was very creative and forward thinking. He set about reforming theatrical practices in his new capacity, including the elimination of audience seats on the stage and the licentious practice of visits by gentlemen to actresses behind the scenes. He made improvements in stage settings, introduced new ideas in stage direction, and broke new ground in actors' conditions with annual wages and tours. Dibdin credits him with ‘having been the first to raise the status and morale of the theatre in Edinburgh’.4 Nevertheless, his success in the
Scottish capital was undermined once again by eccentricity and a ‘peculiar oddity of temper’.5 Worse, he was unreliable particularly with regard to money. The first of at least
three bankruptcies occurred in February 1755. Accompanied by a two month spell in jail, ‘his furniture was sold off and his children turned out into the street’.6
Lee remained a controversial figure throughout a life that involved moving from post to post, (both Dublin and Edinburgh again, then London) in a mix of jobs. These positions included playwright and adaptor7, theatrical producer, manager, plain actor and
even teacher of elocution late in his life. He finally settled in Bath in 1778 as director of Orchard Street Theatre. Lee seems to have been at his best when in charge, as he was in Bath and Canongate. Leadership applied itself well to the egotism he so often displayed in the theatrical world. When not in command, it seems he was even more easily embroiled in disputes about money than otherwise. These caused him to write
argumentative tracts to various figures and authorities, few of which afforded him much benefit.
From this parental background the sisters acquired two major assets. Firstly there was culture and education, insisted on by their eccentric father. Secondly came worldy experience that gave rise to a pragmatic wisdom, a necessity forced by the often harsh consequences of his actions. For the most part the children would seem to have been well schooled: ‘his [John Lee's] daughters highly educated, had mixed much with the best society’.8 Nevertheless, they had to endure the ups and downs pressed upon them by the
inconsistencies of their father’s personality. On the positive side, there seems no likelihood they were detrimentally dragged around from one theatre location to another, whereas they did benefit from mixing in theatre society through acting in some plays, and become well travelled. Sophia, for example, visited Winchester from where she got the idea for her first published novel, The Recess. On the down side, a family of seven children was quite a task of care in these volatile circumstances, and at least four were made destitute (albeit perhaps temporarily) by John Lee’s 1755 bankruptcy. The family had also to suffer the loss of two of their junior number, both early in the lives of Sophia and Harriet.
Sophia's strengths were soon to be tested. Before reaching the age of twenty (and when writing her first novel), her mother was taken badly ill. Sophia was oligated to nurse her, and did so until the day Anna-Sophia died at Craven Hall in September 1770. This was an abrupt end to Sophia's childhood. She had become leader and guide for the rest of the family, a second ‘mother’.9 But crisis was about to strike from another yet
familiar source. The imprudent financial dealings of her father saw Sophia thrown into jail less than two years after her mother's death. Typical of her, she responded positively to this latest trauma. From inside her cell she conceived a first play, The Chapter of
Accidents which was to become not merely a huge on-stage success10 but a best-seller in
book form too. There were at least fourteen editions published between 1780 and 1883. Its achievements were to set the base from which all other activities could be spawned.
It was not until eight years after its conception in 1779 that the now completed work was sent to the stage director of Covent Garden, a man called Harris. At first, Harris
found great favour, although suggesting a number of changes. These amounted to adapting the play into an opera format and suppressing particular passages. Then Harris seems to have had a change of mind. Apparently, he had been presented with a play similar to Sophia's by another author. She, unhappy with the procrastination that followed, took her work directly to Covent Garden's great rival, Coleman of the Haymarket. Coleman was immediately impressed. He saw the play's literary worth and commercial potential, but in its original form. He had Sophia revert it back, and put on the production. It received immediate acclaim. The first performance on August 5th 1780, to a packed theatre, won ‘very warm and general applause’.11 Some critics did look for
fault. There were parallels drawn with Diderot's Père de Famille (1760) which may have raised eyebrows. In the Biographia Dramatica in 1782 it was written: ‘Sorry are we to observe from the spirit that discovers itself in the preface of her only dramatic performance that she seems to possess much of her father's petulance and irascibility’.12
But Sophia drove onwards. Instead of plunging headlong behind this new found success, she used the income to release her father from prison, then set up a provision of financial security for the younger family members. Rather than investing in a full-time writing career, she purchased a boarding school in Bath. This choice was to produce a comprehensive range of benefits for the Lees. Together with Harriet, Charlotte and the younger Ann, all of whom could be employed as teachers, Sophia led the construction of a way of life that gave stability, independence and status. The school started small, just twenty-three pupils in mediocre surroundings. It finished twenty-two years later triple the size, located in the most prestigious part of the town, and having outgrown itself twice. Yet, the school was not so unlike others in Bath, an area which had established itself as a prime centre for the private school market at that period. As Boaden puts it, ‘ ... they did not profess to teach what could be taught no where else’.13 What was the secret of this
new success by the Lees in such a competitive marketplace? To begin with it was a question of research. Charlotte, the eldest, tested the ground by taking a post at the prominent Rosco's school (which incidentally did not survive the test of time itself, falling into liquidation in 1782). She then opened her own day-school at Fountain Buildings in July 1780. Sophia meanwhile, was teaching too, but privately. When all was set, the Lees
placed advertisements for their new venture in the Bath Chronicle. One such, in December 1780, read:
Miss Lee, and sisters, respectfully address their terms to Parents inclined to entrust them with the important care of educating their Daughters.- For boarding and instructing young ladies in English and French gramatically, Writing, Arithmetic, and fine Works.
The school opened at 9, Vineyards on 16th January 1781. Follow-up adverts continued through February with one of these somewhat bizarrely coinciding with the publication of the obituary of John Lee, who had died at his house in New King Street that same month. School fees of £25 per annum plus two guinea entrance, were set at a price that deliberately undercut Rosco's at £35 per annum with a five guinea entrance. Within little over a year the school, immediately successful, was being forced a move to larger premises (7, Belmont). Almost at once the Lees were able to enlist a full quota of twenty-four boarders at the new location. Sound marketing had always to be backed by teaching quality and organisation. The sisters were endowed with these skills in some abundance. In an interwoven partnership, each sister undertook appropriate roles within a balanced timetable. Sophia, the natural leader, was headmistress. She was known amongst pupils for her qualities of courage, energy and strong personality, and respected almost to the point of fear. Harriet, on the other hand, was spontaneous and hearty, closer to the girls. Charlotte, already an experienced teacher, and Ann, reserved and perhaps not as active as the others in school life, made up the initial compliment.
The regime took on a sage mix of firmness and fairness. There was a close teacher/pupil relationship, strict but just discipline. A carrot and stick approach rewarded deserving pupils but did not shy from exacting punishment when required, although never corporal. Whatever the commercial and pupil rivalries with similar establishments like Colbourne and Rosco, the Lees continued to march forward. The sisters were proving themselves practical women, gifted with a sense of prudent management. The school expanded again. After 7, Belmont it was on to Belvedere House in 1786. By the 90's this grand location was housing some fifty-two boarders alongside twenty-two day pupils. It required an expansion of staffing. Three more full-time teachers were recruited together
with some specialists, such as a dance teacher considered the best in the area. As for Charlotte, she was to leave in 1792 to marry in Bristol, although sadly said to be to a man ‘of mean station’.14
Yet for Sophia and Harriet the school's burgeoning prosperity was still only one part of their activities and achievements. They were not to be confined to a single string in the bow. Simultaneous to running the school's curriculum, Sophia at least, continued to teach privately in pupils' houses. More impressive still, both Sophia and Harriet wrote prolifically: twelve works in total, but some running to six extensive volumes. These included plays, poems, translations and novels. With the exception of The Assignation (a non-published play by Sophia put on just once in 1807) and The Three Strangers (an adaptation to Harriet's Kruitzner played just four times in 1825), all were published 1780-1805, a period virtually simultaneous to that of their school teaching enterprises. Using a judicious mixture of historical, gothic and sentimental tradition, again they triumphed, becoming widely read and acknowledged even beyond Britain. They used their cultural heritage and market insight to meet the expectations of a new fast-rising readership eager to experience greater levels of literary sensation. Among their writings, two works particularly stand out: Sophia's The Recess (1783-85), which went on to be translated into French, German, Spanish and Portuguese, and the jointly co-authored Canterbury Tales (1797-1805).15 But the pattern for all their literary work was the same: understand the
market, play to the market, move with the market.
And the market had certainly been moving fast, driven by several factors. Firstly there was a change in the publishing world. Patrons had been replaced by commercial publishers, the likes of Cadell and Robinson. This new breed saw their primary function as providing books that public sentiment requested, in other words those the public would buy. Another development was that of lending libraries. This innovation was responsible for tapping into a new readership who could not buy or did not always wish to. The scene had set about a revolution. The Lees exploited the situation. They targetted new, young, middle-class female readers who wanted more than tears and the over-moralisation of Richardson's sentimental novels. To them, the Lees offered excitement, adventure and a way to withdraw from everyday life, but through characters with whom they could
identify. In The Recess, Sophia explored the concepts of madness and death, and weaved them into spectacular events. She chose Mary Stuart as an illustrious figure, but gave her a human and tragical dimension. Likewise, she mirrored the conditions of eighteenth-century women through the novel’s central topic of emprisonment and the beginning of liberation. Romantic popular literature was taken to new levels of enrichment.16
The promotion of middle-class ideals was a further method of attracting this readership’s approval. In The Errors of Innocence (1786), virtue was not to be considered a birthright, but one derived from education. Further challenges to traditional thinking were provoked by setting some tales during the American and French Revolutions when there was implicit criticism of monarchies and aristocracy.
The sisters galvanised their public in other ways too. They adapted to changes in fashions and taste as they happened. They responded to a revival of sentiment for the nation’s past together with feelings of nationalism. The glorious Elizabethan period of history was selected as the background for The Recess. It had high profile figures like Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Norfolk, as well as impressive settings such as old castles and ruined abbeys. Protestant Anglicanism also was favoured above Catholicism to reinforce nationalist feeling. In addition to using a mosaic of different fashionable literary trends17, Sophia and Harriet sprinkled the frameworks of past history with
trappings of contemporary aesthetics and innovations.The grounds of a sixteenth-century Kenilworth Castle were given the elements of a Capability Brown landscape whilst the castle itself became a factory.
The Lees even utilised the concept of public suspense to help promote their work. They resorted to a familiar ploy: market testing. Only the first of The Recess's three volumes was published in 1783, the second and third not until two years later. By this time the public's appetite for the full story was well and truly whetted. Sophia’s obituary notes that ‘the success of this work far surpassed her expectations: its interest was increased by her publishing only the first volume, in order to feel the ground’.18 The
process was repeated for the Canterbury Tales, published in five separate volumes over eight years.
To achieve their literary aims, the sisters did not entirely sacrifice themselves to originality. They allowed themselves clever use of the work of others. They borrowed materials and adapted, rearranged and trimmed fellow writers' works. Both English and French sources were used in this pursuit. The Lees were commercialists rather than purists. From English literature there are the influences of Chaucer, Clara Reeve, Thomas Leland and that of Walpole; from the French something of the plot and topics of Prevost's
Cleveland (1731-39). Elsewhere are parallels to Baculard d’Arnaud and Diderot. This
element of their work bears some hallmarks of their father trait to create ‘Literary Murders’, but the sisters were more talented writers than he, and the finished products far more subtle. Yet it would entirely be wrong to think of the Lees as mere plagiarists. Sophia and Harriet were bold and creative in their own right. They experimented with new ideas and were responsible for the introduction of new literary devices such as the ‘triple-decker’ and the concept of ‘in medias res beginning’. They advanced what later became known as ‘pathetic fallacy’ as well as the technique of the twin plot. They also conferred a psychological dimension on the gothic novel and elaborated the characterisation of their protagonists. After them, the gothic novel became associated with unfortunate love and the doomed romantic hero became an accepted figure. Indeed it would be no over-statement to say they greatly influenced two major writers, Ann Radcliffe and later Lord Byron, together with a whole generation of popular female writers.
The Lees were as comfortable writing experimentally as they were re-working the material of others. They simply applied themselves to the market with the fullest range of tools possible to summon. Unlike their father, they seemed to be unpretentious. They were able to admit natural weaknesses and thus avoid over-exposing them. Areas of shortcoming were perhaps mawkishness, heaviness and a certain disregard for historical accuracy. Sophia and Harriet however, always worked on their strengths and played hard to them. They concentrated on novels which adapted well to their way of life. Although they did not excel in poetry and drama (except with The Chapter of Accidents), they retained a wide knowledge of these genres, and used them in their novels. Novels could also draw on fine individual strengths and style. Harriet’s wit and insight were used in her
tales to draw concise and striking portrayals. She also preferred lighter touches and liked to interweave brief letters into epistolary novels. Clara Lennox (1797), a series of seventy-nine such letters, is a good illustration of this. In contrast, Sophia's work was strong and powerful. She pressed the literary boundaries by intensifying effects. There was a greater gloom to her novels, a greater audacity to her social criticism and a greater boldness to her literary experiments. She was more prolific than Harriet too. The Recess with its three volumes of more than three hundred pages each, was doubled in size by The
Life of a Lover (1804) at six volumes, whilst The Two Emilys occupied the whole of one
six-hundred page volume of the Canterbury Tales.
But for all those individual talents the Lee sisters had one further great strength: unity. The Canterbury Tales is a perfect example. Written in joint names, the respective authorship remained hidden until after Sophia's death when Harriet wrote a new preface in 1832. In it, she admitted Sophia had withdrawn after The Two Emilys, allowing Harriet to be proeminent:
...she declined taking any future share in the work, and left the additional volumes, whatever their number might prove, to me, ‘in whose mind’, as she smilingly observed, ‘thick-coming fancies allowed no room for further copartnership’.19
The concession appears to have been for greater good rather than the result of any spat between them. Either way, it heralded a sparkling result for the project. Harriet’s references to ‘copartnership’, ‘coalition’ and ‘share’ suggest that the great regard the sisters had for each other extended right through their lives into their literary work. Whatever the intricacies of the sisters’ relationship, they both had become cutting edges of new literary achievements despite some academic criticism.
Notwithstanding their literary and scholastic work, the Lees enjoyed a rich social life, becoming pillars of a prestigious circle of friends. Along with soirees and visits to the theatre, the circle provided a way to climb to the highest levels in society and there gain full recognition. Perhaps more than anything else, this was the sisters' greatest self-reward for the total of their endeavours. It was proof of their self-reliance, and they were
well known for their sense of etiquette and religion, so commensurate with the public standing they had achieved.
The group was composed of figures from the worlds of art, literature and politics. It even reached beyond England's shores for its number. There were the Sheridans, Sarah Siddons, and Ann Radcliffe. Sir Thomas Lawrence was another. He had become a close friend of Sophia's whose genius she first discovered. Then, alongside local dignitaries like Mrs Piozzi and Mrs Palmer (the wife of the Mayor) came international flavouring. There were politicians in exile, Italian Count Melzi D'Eril and Corsican leader General Paoli together with another Italian, poet Hippolyte Pindemonte. It seems probable circle gatherings were at least sometimes at Belvedere House. How the pride of inmates and their parents might have been swelled by that connection, as indeed was the case for all people of Bath! There is even suggestion that the eldest girls would have been permitted to sit in such company on some evenings.
For the sisters, making all their extensive activities possible required comprehensive organisation. In an efficient rota system, they alternated their writing, socializing and teaching duties, additionally utilising each of these to promote the two others. It worked spectacularly. The three facets blended to form a self-perpetuating whole. Books sold, social standing reached ever new heights, and Belvedere House became one of the most renowned and sought-after schools in the country. Its owners held celebrity status. Even the school’s location was to be envied. It stood proudly at the top of the town with terraces overlooking the beautiful Hedgemead Park, the town itself and its valley. Its curriculum included a three-yearly held ball in the Bath Assembly Rooms attended by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of York. Its pupils (such as Susan Sibbald) belonged to the best families in the land. Belvedere House was never less than full to capacity as the two previous schools had been. A waiting list gave vent to the view that numbers of boarders could have doubled if only space had allowed. The Lees had built a life success that did not merely end with them. With respect to Belvedere House, it continued at least four decades after their retirement:
The school had considerable repute, both in their own time and while it was conducted, after their removal, by Mrs. Broadhurst whose husband, the Rev. Thomas Broadhurst, was well known in literary and musical circles in Bath.20
But there was a price to pay. First was a certain diversity of effort, which led to Harriet remarking that her sister had sacrificed her literary propensity.21 It is hard to
imagine the sisters, interrupted in their writing by the smothered laughters of little girls at night, take a candle, re-establish order, only to then plunge back into the plot of their latest written work. Second, and perhaps more critical for Ann, was a denial of sentimental attachments. Whilst Sophia remained a staunch spinster and Harriet, attractive with her sharpness and spontaneity, resisted several pressing suitors, Ann seemed unable to live likewise.
The first of at least two serious attempts to gain the hand of Harriet was made by a rich young Italian, Marquis Trotti, in 1791-92. The barriers of social position, religion and nationality proved insurmountable despite the marquis' insistence. The connection collapsed on both sides. Some six years later it was the turn of William Godwin, a radical philosopher and reformer (and father of Mary Shelley). The pair met in Bath in March 1798 during a ten day stay by Godwin. It was love at first sight for him. He was fascinated by Harriet's intelligence and wit. In a letter written in April 1798, he confessed: ‘There are so few persons in the world that have excited that degree of interest in my mind which you have excited....’.22 More correspondence followed. But although
Harriet seemed to him to remain available according to her letters, her own written note to herself on one of his communications was somewhat cutting. ‘The tone of this letter appears to me to betray vanity disappointed by the scantiness of the homage it has received, rather than mortified by any apprehension of discouragement’.23 She then adds
that his entitlement to be received by her, even simply as an aquaintance, ‘has been lost by his forwardness to employ the privileges, and claim the rights of a more endeared position’. The doomed Godwin continued to persist and is even known to have proposed. But in August, Sophia stepped in. Amidst concerns which included Godwin’s atheism, Harriet was persuaded to call a final halt. Any deeper reasons for the collapse of both Trotti’s and Godwin’s attempts may never be known. Devotion to school, social and
literary life combined with Harriet’s strong self-dependent personality, and even her feelings for her younger sister Ann's fragility may well have been decisive. There seemed no great regrets.
But for the over-sensitive Ann, it was different. After a winter of fever and depression, she made an attempt on her life. While walking with two aquaintances, she deliberately fell into a river and did not seem bothered to receive help. It was thought that this episode was brought on by a broken heart, although the object of her love remained nameless. She survived this first attempt, but tragically not the second on 23rd September 1805. That morning, she decided to remain in bed while her sisters went to town. They returned to find her suspended from a rope attached to the top railing of her bed. The verdict was suicide through lunacy.
Ann's actions may have been a turning point in the elder sisters' lives. Having retired very comfortably from school life and now living in South Lyncombe (just south of Bath), they decided to move right away from the area. The choice of Manchester was linked to the presence there of their surviving brother, George Augustus. He had become partner in Manchester cotton-spinning firm Phillips and Lee, and was one of a new generation of industrial revolution management. The family traits of pragmatism and commercial creativity were shining through again. George Augustus adopted new inventions for manufacturing, was the first to employ cast-iron beams to render his mills fire-proof, and became a leader of large employers in the introduction of gas in workshops. He counted Boulton and Watt amongst his friends. He was also responsible for many working reforms, and induced his thousand strong workforce to raise and administer a fund for mutual relief in sickness.
But after so many years in the more gentile setting of the West Country, it does not seem totally surprising that the industrial bustle of a large city such as Manchester would not suit the sisters for long. They moved back to the South-West, this time to Monmothside (a village near Tintern Abbey) before a final change to Clifton, Bristol, for reasons of health and convenience, in 1811. The peace and quiet of the country was a more suitable setting to the contrasting glamour and fashion of urban social life. They remained socially active, through for example mixing with the Porter sisters, but
completed no further literary works. In 1823, Sophia contracted a lung illness. In March of the next year she died in Harriet's arms, aged 74.
Harriet however carried on, showing something of her own individual strengths and resilience, and that she was not totally dependent on Sophia. As she had herself remarked earlier, she was ‘independent in mind’.24 Harriet kept her social life to the end.
She continued to be busy for an amazing twenty-seven more years before finally passing away at Clifton in 1851, aged 94. The ‘old lady’ had been, ‘a brilliant conversationalist to the last, with a fund of interesting anecdotes concerning the sister whom she so greatly loved and admired’ according to Montague Summers.25
Were the Lee sisters really commercial heroines? Critics may assert not, claiming plagiarism and shortlived fashion as verification of lack of value and quality in their literary work. But aside from the fact their writing was only one aspect of their commercial life, in many ways these facets help prove the point. The Lees deliberately attempted to be fashionable and more importantly, saleable. Adapting good ideas into modern trends as they moved was precisely the game-plan. A purely classical literary legacy was not foremost in the mind. There was a deliberate sacrifice of critical acclaim in favour of popular success and financial reward. To make the plan work, they utilised what they had. The heritage of their father's creative artistry allied to the commercial heritage of both parents was a starting point. To this they added other qualities. Determination was one. Sophia doggedly persisted with the commercialisation of The
Chapter of Accidents and throughout her career, ‘did not bend implicitly before the daily
stagyrites (who) annoyed her with criticism, affecting an extreme morality’.26 Then there
was organisation. This was revealed most clearly in their teaching life. There was nothing which ruled out use of others' good ideas or demanded a definitive level of literary quality, other than the requirements of the book-buying public. The Lees were without doubt commercially astute. Their pragmatism and entrepreneurial skills, tied to the movements of the times (these reflected in their writings) enabled them to achieve their considerable commercial successes.
Just how critical the cultural movements were is another question. Could the Lee sisters, as women, even with all their skills, have succeeded to the same extent one hundred years before? Although we can only speculate, one thing is certain: their actions did represent a lead role in the breaking down of a predominant stereotype, that of a woman's function being greatly restricted to one of domesticity.
What is more, there are two other factors to be taken into account when judging the Lees’ worth. For these we must look at the emotional drives underlying the efforts. First there is self-dependence. It was the sisters' drive for self-determinism that was at the heart of their actions. It may have partly come about through the volatility of family life and the need for security. Nevertheless, this over-riding desire may say more about them than any defiance of British social structuring current at the time. The cause of radical feminism was certainly not paramount. In the 1804 preface of The Life of a Lover, Sophia declares:
The rights and characters of woman have been placed in lights by which the delicacy of the sex has often been wholly sacrificed to the assertion of a hardy equality with man, that, even if it assured to us an increase of esteem, would cause an equal deduction of tenderness: a bad exchange for the sex upon the great scale.27
Yet within the concept of self-dependence there is a paradox, since the sisters maintained a certain reliance on each other. But this seems to be a wish rather than a need. They chose to benefit from the mixing together of their complementary temperaments and styles, whilst each one still retained a fierce autonomy. Sophia displayed her individual strengths very early in life. Harriet’s were to show much later when she survived her sister by such a long period.
At a deeper level than self-dependence, we may find an even grander quality with the Lees: that of duty of care. Once again the start might be seen to be within the circumstances of their father’s unreliability and their mother’s illness. But perhaps it begins in earnest after Anna-Sophia’s death. This quality was not only Sophia’s. In Harriet we are shown something of it in the protection and support (fully shared by Sophia) afforded to the unfortunate Ann, and the devotion to Sophia herself. It can even
be seen in their brother. The factory working reforms of George Augustus are a simple case of duty of care to those of whom he was responsible. Within it was a strict loyalty and a moral fairness. Sophia promised Dr. John Elliott, the man tending Anna-Sophia as she lay dying, that she would dedicate one of her books to him; a promise she upheld no less than thirteen years later when The Recess was published in 1783. The Lees carried these principles through into all facets of their lives.
Perhaps self-dependence and duty of care were indeed the critical factors. If so, by the results of Sophia and Harriet’s actions we can observe, both these drives were truly fulfilled. Then to the literary critic we could ask this question. Who can justify the claim it was not possible for Sophia to have successfully concentrated her writing on so-called classics should she have singlemindedly followed a literary career alone? The motivations that would have stopped her surely were the more noble: self-determination, and above all an active concern for the welfare of those she loved most. Dare we select literature above humanity? Surely not.
Yes, the Lee sisters were commercial heroines without doubt, but always encompassing a human touch.
1 This number does not correspond with other documentation. It is derived from the following.
InThe Annals of the Edinburgh Stage with an Account of the Rise and Progress of Dramatic
Writing in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1888), p. 80, by James C. Dibdin, John Lee himself states that
at the time of his bankruptcy in 1755, he had « two children destitute in Edinburgh » and « two more waiting in London » with his wife. Three more children (Harriet, George Augustus and Ann) are known to have been born well after this date.
2 James Cundie,The Thespian Dictionary, or Dramatic Biography of the Present Age (London,
1805).
3 Philip H. Highfill, Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses... 1660-1800. (Carbondale :
Southern Illinois Press, 1973 ) 203.
4 Dibdin 72. 5 Highfill 203. 6 Dibdin 80.
7He was charged with having committed ‘four Literary Murders’. See Highfill 203.
8 Susan Sibbald, The Memoirs of Susan Sibbald. 1783-1812 (London : John Lane, the Bodley
Head Ltd, 1926) 34-5.
9 Harriet Lee, preface, The Canterbury Tales by Harriet and Sophia Lee (London : Pandora
Press, 1989) XVIII.
10 Bath Chronicles (30 May 1782) : « Miss Lee’s Chapter of Accidents continues to be received
in London with
the most universal applause. »
11Bath Journal ( 14 August 1780).
12 David Erskine Baker, Biographia Dramatica, or a Companion to the Playhouse (London,
1782) I.
13 Boaden, Memoirs of Mrs Siddons, with Anecdotes of Authors and Actors (London, 1831) I,
211.
14 Hester Lynch Thrale, Thraliana, The Diary of Mrs Hester Lynch Thrale, ed. K. C. Balderston,
2nd ed. (Oxford :
Clarendon Press, 1951) 695 (note).
15 Montague Summers, The Gothic Quest. A History of the Gothic Novel (London : The Fortune
Press, 1938)
164 : « The Recess is one of the landmarks of English literature and it is difficult to understand how those
who have not read at least The Recess and the Canterbury Tales can claim any right to be heard when they
discourse upon and trace the history of English fiction. »
16 J. M. S. Tompkins, foreword, The Recess by Sophia Lee (New York : Arno Press, 1972) III-V :
« The modern
reader, who turns the pages of his best-seller of his great-great-grandmother’s day, will find in them some of
the permanent attractions of popular romantic literature... The Recess holds a worthy place in the library of
strong imagination... In its own day, the book was widely read and praised. »
17 Harriet Lee, preface to the Canterbury Tales, XVIII : « The first English romance that blended
interesting
fiction with historical events and characters, embellishing both by picturesque description. »
18 Gentleman’s Magazine XCIV, 1824. Obituary. Sophia Lee . 19 Harriet Lee, preface to the Canterbury Tales, XVII .
20 Jerom Murch, Mrs Barbauld and her Contemporaries (London : Longman, MDCCCLXXVII)
134.
21 Harriet Lee, preface to the Canterbury Tales XVIII : « An interval... still elapsed between the
publication of each succeeding volume; not from lack either of inclination or materials to proceed upon, but
was this a trifling sacrifice on her part; since her first works enjoyed such popularity as might have engaged
a less affectionate character in a very different career... »
22 C. Kegan Paul, William Godwin : His Friends and Contemporaries, vol 1, (London, 1876) 299. 23 Paul 301.
24 Paul 308. 25 Summers 167 26 Boaden 209.
