Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Robert
Connal and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
HENRY FIELDING
_A MEMOIR_
INCLUDING NEWLY DISCOVERED LETTERS
AND RECORDS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM CONTEMPORARY PRINTS
BY
G. M. GODDEN
"I am a man myself, and my heart is interested in whatever can befall the
rest of mankind."
JOSEPH ANDREWS.
PREFACE
New material alone could justify any attempt to supplement the _Fielding_
of Mr Austin Dobson. Such material has now come to light, and together
with reliable facts collected by previous biographers, forms the subject
matter of the present volume. As these pages are concerned with Fielding
the man, and not only with Fielding the most original if not the greatest
of English novelists, literary criticism has been avoided; but all
incidents, disclosed by hitherto unpublished documents, or found hidden in
the columns of contemporary newspapers, which add to our knowledge of
Fielding's personality, have been given.
The new material includes records of Fielding's childhood; documents
concerning his estate in Dorsetshire; the date and place, hitherto
undiscovered, of that central event in his life, the death of his beloved
wife, whose memorial was to be the imperishable figure of "Sophia
Western"; letters, now first published, adding to our knowledge of his
energies in social and legislative reform, and of the circumstances of his
life; many extracts from the columns of the daily press of the period;
notices, hitherto overlooked, from his contemporaries; and details from
the unexplored archives of the Middlesex Records concerning his strenuous
work as a London magistrate. The few letters by Fielding already known to
exist have been doubled in number; and a reason for the extraordinary
rarity of these letters has been found in the unfortunate destruction,
many years ago, of much of his correspondence. The charm of the one
intimate letter that we possess from the pen of the 'Father of the English
Novel,' that written to his brother John, during the voyage to Lisbon,
enhances regret at the loss of these letters.
Among the contemporary prints now first reproduced that entitled the
_Conjurors_ is of special interest, as being the only sketch of Fielding,
drawn during his lifetime, known to exist. Rough as it is, the
characteristic figure of the man, as described by his contemporaries and
drawn from memory in Hogarth's familiar plate, is perfectly apparent. The
same characteristics may be distinguished in a small figure of the
novelist introduced into the still earlier political cartoon, entitled the
_Funeral of Faction_.
Such in brief are the reasons for the existence of this volume. It remains
to express my warmest acknowledgment of Mr Austin Dobson's unfailing
counsel and assistance. My thanks are also due to Mr Ernest Fielding for
permission to reproduce the miniature which appears as the frontispiece;
to Mr Aubrey Court, of the House of Lords; to Mr E. S. W. Hart, for his
help throughout the necessary researches among the Middlesex Records; to
Mrs Deane of Gillingham; and to Mr Frederick Shum of Bath. And I am
indebted to Mr Sidney Colvin, Keeper of the Department of Prints and
Drawings in the British Museum, in regard to almost every one of the
thirty-two rare prints and cartoons now reproduced.
G. M. GODDEN.
_October_ 26, 1909.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
YOUTH
CHAPTER II
PLAY-HOUSE BARD
CHAPTER III
MARRIAGE
CHAPTER IV
POLITICAL PLAYS
CHAPTER V
HOMESPUN DRAMA
CHAPTER VI
BAR STUDENT--JOURNALIST
CHAPTER VII
COUNSELLOR FIELDING
CHAPTER VIII
_Joseph Andrews_
CHAPTER IX
THE _Miscellanies_ AND _Jonathan Wild_
CHAPTER X
PATRIOTIC JOURNALISM
CHAPTER XI
_Tom Jones_
CHAPTER XII
MR JUSTICE FIELDING
CHAPTER XIII
FIELDING AND LEGISLATION
CHAPTER XIV
_Amelia_
CHAPTER XV
JOURNALIST AND MAGISTRATE
CHAPTER XVI
POOR LAW REFORM
CHAPTER XVII
VOYAGE TO LISBON--DEATH
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_From photographs by Marie Léon_.
Henry Fielding
_From a miniature now in the possession of Mr Ernest Fielding._
Sharpham House, showing the room in which Fielding was born
_from a print published in 1826_.
Sir Henry Gould
_From a mezzotint by J. Hardy_.
Eton--1742
_From an engraving of a drawing by Cozens_.
Anne Oldfield
_From a mezzotint of a painting by J. Richardson_.
Leyden--1727
_From an engraving of a drawing by C. Pronk_.
Kitty Clive as Philida
_From a mezzotint of a painting by Veter van Bleeck, junr. 1735._
Frontispiece to Fielding's "Tom Thumb"
_By Hogarth_.
The Close, Salisbury--1798
_From an acquatint of a drawing by E. Dayes_.
Charlcombe Church, near Bath
_From an engraving of a drawing made in 1784_.
Fielding's house, East Stour, Dorsetshire
_From a print published in Hutchins' "History of Dorsetshire," 1813_.
Sir Robert Walpole--1740
_From a contemporary cartoon_.
"Pasquin"
_From a cartoon depicting a scene in "Pasquin" in which Harlequinades,
etc., triumph aver legitimate drama. Pope is leaving a box. The Signature
"W. Hogarth" is doubtful_.
Cartoon celebrating the success of "Pasquin"
_From a contemporary cartoon showing Fielding, supported by
Shakespeare, receiving an ample reward, while to Harlequin and his other
opponents is accorded a halter_.
The Little Theatre in the Haymarket
_From an engraving by Dale, showing the demolition of the Little
Theatre in 1821_.
The Green Room, Drury Lane
_From the painting by Hogarth, in the possession of Sir Edward
Tennant_.
The Temple--1738
_From an engraving of a drawing by J. Nicholas_.
Henry Fielding holding the Banner of the "Champion" newspaper
_From a contemporary cartoon showing Sir Robert Walpole laughing at the
"Funeral" of an Opposition Motion in Parliament_.
Cartoon showing Fielding, in Wig and Gown, as a supporter of the
Opposition
_From a print of 1741_.
Henry Fielding reading at the Bedford Arms
_From the frontispiece to Sir John Fielding's "Jests."_
Assignment for "Joseph Andrews"
_From the autograph now in the South Kensington Museum_.
Beaufort Buildings, Strand, in 1725
_From a watercolour drawing by Paul Sandby, 1725_.
Prior Park, near Bath, the seat of Ralph Allen, 1750
_From an engraving of a contemporary drawing_.
George, First Baron Lyttelton
_From a portrait by an unknown artist_.
Theatre Ticket for Fielding's "Mock Doctor"
_The signature "W. Hogarth" is doubtful_.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu--1710
_From an engraving by Caroline Watson, from a miniature in the
possession of the Marquis of Bute_.
The Bow Street Police Court, Sir John Fielding presiding
_From the "Newgate Calendar"_, 1795.
Edward Moore
_From a frontispiece in Chalmers' "British Essayists"_ 1817.
Sir John Fielding
_From a mezzotint of a painting by Nathaniel Hone, R.A._
Ralph Allen
_From a chalk drawing by W. Hoare, R.A._
Henry Fielding
_From an engraving of a pen and ink sketch, made by Hogarth after
Fielding's death_.
Henry Fielding, defending Betty Canning from her accusers, the Lord
Mayor, Dr Hill, and the Gipsy
_From a contemporary print, now first reproduced, and the only known
sketch of Fielding made during his lifetime_.
Justice Saunders Welch
_From an engraving of a sketch by Hogarth_.
Ryde--1795
_From an engraving of a drawing by Charles Tomkins_.
Lisbon--1793
_From a mezzotint of a drawing by Noel_.
The design on the cover is a copy, slightly enlarged, of an impression of
Fielding's seal, attached to an autograph letter in the British Museum.
HENRY FIELDING
CHAPTER I
YOUTH
"I shall always be so great a pedant as to call a man of no
learning a man of no education."--_Amelia_.
Henry Fielding was born at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, on the 22nd
of April 1707. His birth-room, a room known as the Harlequin Chamber,
looked out over the roof of a building which once was the private chapel
of the abbots of Glastonbury; for Sharpham Park possessed no mean
history. Built in the sixteenth century by that distinguished prelate,
scholar, and courtier Abbot Richard Beere, the house had boasted its
chapel, hall, parlour, chambers, storehouses and offices; its fishponds
and orchards; and a park in which might be kept some four hundred head of
deer. It was in this fair demesne that the aged, pious, and benevolent
Abbot Whiting, Abbot Richard's successor, was seized by the king's
commissioners, and summarily hung, drawn, and quartered on the top of the
neighbouring Tor Hill. Sharpham thereupon "devolved" upon the crown; but
the old house remained, standing in peaceful seclusion where the pleasant
slope of Polden Hill overlooks the Somersetshire moors, till the birth of
the 'father of the English Novel' brought a lasting distinction to the
domestic buildings of Abbot Beere. In the accompanying print, published
in 1826, the little window of the Harlequin Chamber may be seen, above
the low roofs of the abbots' chapel.
That Henry Fielding should have been born among buildings raised by
Benedictine hands is not incongruous; for no man ever more heartily
preached and practised the virtue of open-handed charity; none was more
ready to scourge the vices of arrogance, cruelty and avarice; no English
novelist has left us brighter pictures of innocence and goodness. And it
was surely a happy stroke of that capricious Fortune to whom Fielding so
often refers, to allot a Harlequin Chamber for the birth of the author of
nineteen comedies; and yet more appropriate to the robust genius of the
Comic Epic was the accident that placed on the wall, beneath the window
of his birth-room, a jovial jest in stone. For here some
sixteenth-century humorist had displayed the arms of Abbot Beere in the
form of a convivial rebus or riddle--to wit, a cross and two beer flagons.
Soon after the Civil Wars, Sharpham passed into the hands of the
'respectable family' of Gould. By the Goulds the house was considerably
enlarged; and, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, was in the
possession of a distinguished member of the family, Sir Henry Gould,
Knight, and Judge of the King's Bench. Sir Henry had but two children, a
son Davidge Gould, and a daughter Sarah. This only daughter married a
well-born young soldier, the Hon. Edmund Fielding; a marriage which,
according to family assertions, was without the consent of her parents and
"contrary to their good likeing." [1] And it was in the old home of the
Somersetshire Goulds that the eldest son of this marriage, Henry Fielding,
was born.
Thus on the side of his mother, Sarah Gould, Fielding belonged to just
that class of well-established country squires whom later he was to
immortalise in the beautiful and benevolent figure of Squire Allworthy,
and in the boisterous, brutal, honest Western. And the description of
Squire Allworthy's "venerable" house, with its air of grandeur "that
struck you with awe," its position on the sheltered slope of a hill
enjoying "a most charming prospect of the valley beneath," its
surroundings of a wild and beautiful park, well-watered meadows fed with
sheep, the ivy-grown ruins of an old abbey, and far-off hills and sea,
preserves, doubtless, the features of the ancient and stately domain
owned by the novelist's grandfather.
If it was to the 'respectable' Goulds that Fielding owed many of his
rural and administrative characteristics, such as that practical zeal and
ability which made him so excellent a magistrate, it is in the family of
his father that we find indications of those especial qualities of
vigour, of courage, of the generous and tolerant outlook of the well-born
man of the world, that characterise Henry Fielding. And it is also in
these Fielding ancestors that something of the reputed wildness of their
brilliant kinsman may be detected.
For in her wilful choice of Edmund Fielding for a husband, Sir Henry
Gould's only daughter brought, assuredly, a disturbing element into the
quiet Somersetshire home. The young man was of distinguished birth, even
if he was not, as once asserted, of the blood royal of the Hapsburgs.
[2] His ancestor, Sir John Fielding, had received a knighthood for bravery
in the French wars of the fourteenth century. A Sir Everard Fielding led a
Lancastrian army during the Wars of the Roses. Sir William, created Earl
of Denbigh, fell fighting for the king in the Civil Wars, where, says
Clarendon, "he engaged with singular courage in all enterprises of
danger"; a phrase which recalls the description of Henry Fielding "that
difficulties only roused him to struggle through them with a peculiar
spirit and magnanimity." Lord Denbigh fell, covered with wounds, when
fighting as a volunteer in Prince Rupert's troop; while his eldest son,
Basil, then a mere youth, fought as hotly for the Parliament. Lord
Denbigh's second son, who like his father was a devoted loyalist, received
a peerage, being created Earl of Desmond; and two of his sons figure in a
wild and tragic story preserved by Pepys. "In our street," says the
Diarist, writing in 1667, "at the Three Tuns Tavern I find a great hubbub;
and what was it but two brothers had fallen out and one killed the other.
And who s'd. they be but the two Fieldings; one whereof, Bazill, was page
to my Lady Sandwich; and he hath killed the other, himself being very
drunk, and so is sent to Newgate." It was a brother of these unhappy
youths, John Fielding, a royal chaplain and Canon of Salisbury, who by his
marriage with a Somersetshire lady, became father of Edmund Fielding.
Such was Henry Fielding's ancestry, and it cannot be too much insisted on
that, throughout all the vicissitudes of his life, he was ever a man of
breeding, no less than a man of wit. "His manners were so gentlemanly,"
said his friend Mrs Hussey, "that even with the lower classes with which
he frequently condescended to chat, such as Sir Roger de Coverley's old
friends, the Vauxhall watermen, they seldom outstepped the limits of
propriety." And a similar recognition comes from the hand of a great, and
not too friendly, critic. To "the very last days of his life," wrote
Thackeray, "he retained a grandeur of air, and although worn down by
disease his aspect and presence imposed respect on the people around him."
This Denbigh ancestry recalls a pleasant example of Fielding's wit,
preserved in a story told by his son, and recorded in the pages of that
voluminous eighteenth-century anecdotist, John Nichols. "Henry Fielding,"
says Nichols, "being once in company with the Earl of Denbigh, and the
conversation's turning on Fielding's being of the Denbigh family, the
Earl asked the reason why they spelt their names differently; the Earl's
family doing it with the E first (Feilding), and Mr Henry Fielding with
the I first (Fielding). 'I cannot tell, my Lord,' answered Harry, 'except
it be that my branch of the family were the first that knew how to
spell.'"
In accordance with the fighting traditions of his race, Edmund Fielding
went into the army; his name appearing as an ensign in the 1st Foot
Guards. Also, as became a Fielding, he distinguished himself, we are
told, in the "Wars against France with much Bravery and Reputation"; and
it was probably owing to active service abroad that the birth of his
eldest son took place in his wife's old Somersetshire home. The date fits
in well enough with the campaigns of Ramilies, Oudennarde and Malplaquet.
Soon after Henry's birth, however, his father had doubtless left the Low
Countries, for, about 1709, he appears as purchasing the colonelcy of an
Irish Regiment. This regiment was ordered, in 1710, to Spain; but before
that year the colonel and his wife and son had a separate home provided
for them, by the care of Sir Henry Gould. At what precise date is
uncertain, but some time before 1710, Sir Henry had purchased an estate
at East Stour in Dorsetshire, consisting of farms and lands of the value
of £4750, intending to settle some or the whole of the same on his
daughter and her children. And already, according to a statement by the
colonel, the old judge had placed his son-in-law in possession of some or
all of this purchase, sending him oxen to plough his ground, and
promising him a "Dairye of Cows." Sir Henry moreover had, said his
son-in-law, declared his intention "to spend the vacant Remainder of his
life," sometimes with his daughter, her husband, and children at Stour,
and sometimes with his son Davidge, presumably at Sharpham. But in March,
1710, Sir Henry's death frustrated his planned retirement in the Vale of
Stour; although three years later, in 1713, his intentions regarding a
Dorsetshire home for his daughter were carried out by the conveyance to
her [3] and her children of the Stour estate, for her sole enjoyment. The
legal documents are careful to recite that the rents and profits should be
paid to Mrs Fielding or her children, and her receipt given, and that the
said Edmund "should have nothing to do nor intermeddle therewith."
In this settlement of the East Stour farms, to the greater part of which
Henry Fielding, then six years old, would be joint heir with his sisters,
Colonel Fielding himself seems to have had to pay no less than £1750,
receiving therefor "a portion of the said lands." So by 1713 both Edmund
Fielding and his wife were settled, as no inconsiderable landowners,
among the pleasant meadows of Stour; and there for the next five years
Henry's early childhood was passed. Indeed, Mrs Fielding must have been
at Stour when her eldest son was but three years old, for the baptism of
a daughter, Sarah, appears in the Stour registers in November 1710. This
entry is followed by the baptism of Anne in 1713, of Beatrice in 1714, of
Edmund in 1716, and by the death of Anne in the last-named year, Henry
being then nine years old.
According to Arthur Murphy, Fielding's earliest and too often inaccurate
biographer, the boy received "the first rudiments of his education at
home, under the care of the Revd. Mr Oliver." Mr Oliver was the curate of
Motcombe, a neighbouring village; and we have the authority of Murphy and
of Hutchins, the historian of Dorset, for finding 'a very humorous and
striking portrait' of this pedagogue in the Rev. Mr Trulliber, the
pig-breeding parson of _Joseph Andrews_. If this be so, Harry Fielding's
first tutor at Stour was of a figure eminently calculated to foster the
comic genius of his pupil. "He" (Trulliber), wrote that pupil, some thirty
years later, "was indeed one of the largest Men you should see, and could
have acted the part of Sir _John Falstaff_ without stuffing. Add to this,
that the Rotundity of his Belly was considerably increased by the
shortness of his Stature, his shadow ascending very near as far in height
when he lay on his Back, as when he stood on his Legs. His Voice was loud
and hoarse, and his Accents extremely broad; to complete the whole he had
a Stateliness in his Gait when he walked, not unlike that of a Goose, only
he stalked slower." It appears that the widow of the Motcombe curate
denied the alleged portrait; but the house where Mr Oliver lived, "seemed
to accord with Fielding's description ... and an old woman who remembered
him observed that 'he dearly loved a bit of good victuals, and a drop of
drink.'" Bearing in mind the great novelist's own earnest declaration that
he painted "not men but manners," we may fairly assume that his
Dorsetshire tutor belonged to that class of coarse farmer-parson so justly
satirised in the person of Trulliber. According to another sketch of
Fielding's life, his early education was also directed by the rector of
Stour Provost, "his Parson Adams." [4]
While Harry Fielding was thus learning his first rudiments, his father,
the colonel, seems to have been engaged in less useful pursuits in
London. The nature of these pursuits appears from a _Bill of Complaint_,
which by a happy chance has been preserved, between "Edmund Fielding of
East Stour, Dorsetshire," and one Robert Midford, pretending to be a
captain of the army. In this _Bill_ [5] the said Edmund declares that in
1716, being then resident in London, he often frequented Princes
Coffee-house in the Parish of St James. At Princes he found his company
sought by the reputed Captain Robert Midford, who "prevailed upon him to
play a game called 'Faro' for a small matter of diversion, but by degrees
drew him on to play for larger sums, and by secret and fraudulent means
obtained very large sums, in particular notes and bonds for £500."
Further, the colonel entered into a bond of £200 to one Mrs Barbara
Midford, "sister or pretended sister of the said Robert"; and so finally
was threatened with outlawry by 'Captain' Midford for, presumably, payment
of these debts. How Colonel Edmund finally escaped from the clutches of
these rogues does not appear; but it is clear enough that his Dorsetshire
meadows were a safer place than Princes Coffee-house for a gentleman who
could lose £500 at faro to a masquerading army captain. Also Sir Henry
Gould's wisdom becomes apparent, in bequeathing his daughter an
inheritance with which her husband was to have "nothing to doe."
In 1718, two years after Colonel Fielding's experience at Princes, Mrs
Fielding died, leaving six young children to her husband's care, two sons
and four daughters, Henry, the eldest being but eleven years old. Her
death is recorded in the East Stour registers as follows:--"Sarah, Wife
of the Hon. Edmund Fielding Esqre. and daughter of Sir Henry Gould Kt.
April 18 1718."
About this time (the dates vary between 1716 and 1719) Edmund Fielding
was appointed Colonel of the Invalids, an appointment which he appears to
have held until his death. And within two years of the death of his first
wife, Colonel Fielding must have married again, for in 1720 we find him
and his then wife, _Anne_, selling some 153 acres with messuages,
barns and gardens, in East and West Stour, to one Awnsham Churchill,
Esquire. What relation, if any, this land had to the property of the
colonel's late wife and her children does not appear.
Some time in 1719, the year after his mother's death, or early in 1720,
Henry was sent to Eton, as appears from his father's statement, made in
February 1721, that his eldest son "who is now upwards of thirteen yeares
old is and for more than a yeare last past hath been maintained ... at
Eaton schoole, the yearely expence whereof costs ... upwards of £60." And
the boy must have been well away from the atmosphere of his home, in
these first years after his mother's death, if the allegations of his
grandmother, old Lady Gould, may be believed.
These hitherto unknown records of Henry Fielding's boyhood are to be
found in the proceedings of a Chancery suit begun by Lady Gould, on
behalf of her six grandchildren, Henry, Edmund, [6] Katherine, Ursula,
Sarah and Beatrice, three years after the death of their mother--namely,
on the 10th of February 1721, and instituted in the name of Henry Fielding
as complainant. Lady Gould opens her grandchildren's case with a
comprehensive indictment of her son-in-law. After reciting that her
daughter Sarah had married Edmund Fielding "without the consent of her
Father or Mother and contrary to their good likeing," Lady Gould mentions
her husband's bequest to their daughter, Sarah Fielding, of £3000 in trust
to be laid out in the purchase of lands for the benefit of her and her
children "with direction that the said Edmund Fielding should have nothing
to do nor intermeddle therewith." And how Sir Henry did in his lifetime
purchase "Eastover" estate for his daughter, but died before the trust was
completed; and that in 1713 his trustees, Edmund Fielding consenting,
settled the said estate upon trust for Sarah Fielding and her children
after her, the rents and profits to be paid for her, and acknowledged by
her receipt "without her Husband." And that if Sarah Fielding died
intestate the estate be divided among her children. The bill then shows
that Sarah Fielding did die intestate; and that then Henry and his sisters
and brother "being all Infants of tender years and uncapable of managing
their own affairs and to take Care thereof, well hoped that ... their
Trustees would have taken Care to receive the Rents of the said premises,"
and have applied the same for their maintenance and education. One of
these trustees, we may note, was Henry Fielding's uncle, Davidge Gould.
This reasonable hope of the six "Infants" was however, according to their
grandmother, wholly disappointed. For their uncle Davidge and his
co-trustee, one William Day, allowed Edmund Fielding to receive the rents,
nay "entered into a Combination and Confederacy to and with the said
Edmund Fielding," refusing to intermeddle with the said trust, whereby the
children were in great danger of losing their means of maintenance and
education. And this was by no means all. Lady Gould proceeds to point out
that her son-in-law had, since his wife's death, "intermarried with
one ... Rapha ... Widow an Italian a Person of the Roman Catholick
Profession who has severall children of her own and one who kept an eating
House in London, and not at all fitt to have the care of [the
complainants'] Education and has now two daughters in a Monastery beyond
Sea." It is not difficult to conceive the attitude of Lady Gould of
Sharpham Park to an Italian widow who kept an eating-house; but worse yet,
in the view of those 'No Popery' days, was to follow. "Not only so," says
her ladyship, "the said Edmund Fielding ... threatens to take your
[complainants] from school into his own custody altho' [their] said
Grandmother has taken a House in the City of New Sarum with an intent to
have [her granddaughters] under her Inspection and where ... Katherine,
Ursula and Sarah are now at school"; and "the said Mr Fielding doth give
out in speeches that he will do with [the complainants] what he thinks
fitt, and has openly commended the Manner of Education of young persons in
Monasteryes."
This comprehensive indictment against Colonel Fielding received a prompt
counter, the "Severall Answere of Edmund Fielding Esqre ... to the Bill
of Complaint of Henry Fielding, Katherine Fielding, Ursula Fielding,
Sarah Fielding, and Beatrice Fielding, Infants, by Dame Sarah Gould,
their Grandmother and next Friend," being dated February 23 1721, but
thirteen days after Lady Gould had opened her attack. Out of "a dutiful
Regard to the said Lady Gould his Mother-in-Law," Colonel Fielding
declares himself unwilling to "Controvert anything with her further than
of necessity." But he submits that, in the matter of his marriage, he was
"afterwards well approved of and received" by Sir Henry Gould and his
family; that he was also so happy as to be in favour with Lady Gould
"till he marryed with his now wife"; which he believes "has Occasioned
some Jealosye and Displeasure in the Lady Gould, tho' without Just
Grounds." Edmund Fielding then draws a pastoral picture of himself in
occupation of the East Stour estate, placed there by his father-in-law;
of his oxen and dairy; and of the judge's intention of spending half the
remainder of his days with his son-in-law on this Dorsetshire farm. He
admits his share in the trust settlement after Sir Henry's death; and
points out that his brother-in-law, Davidge Gould, made him pay heavily
on a portion of the estate. And he believes that, as his wife died
intestate, all his children are "Intituled to the said Estate in Equall
proportions."
Then follows the colonel's main defence. His eldest son Henry not being
yet fourteen years of age, he has, ever since the death of his wife,
continued in possession of the premises, taking the rents and profits
thereof, which amount to about £150; and he positively declares that he
has expended more annually on the maintenance and education of the said
complainants, ever since the death of their mother, than the clear income
of the said estate amounts to, and that he shall continue to take "a
Tender and affectionate care of all his said Children." Further, he
professes himself a "protestant of the Communion of the Church of
England," and asserts that he shall and will breed his said children
Protestants of that communion. He protests that his second wife is not an
Italian; nor did she keep an eating-house. He suggests that Lady Gould
took her house at Salisbury "as well with an Intent to convenience
herselfe by liveing in a Towne" as for the inspection of his children. He
"denyeth that he ever Comended the Manner of Education of young persons
in monasterys if it be meant in Respect of Religion." Finally, he says
that he has spent much money on improving the estate; that the income
from the estate is hardly sufficient to maintain his children according
to their station in the world since he is "nearly related to many Noble
Familys"; and he "veryly believes in his conscience he can better provide
for his said Children by reason of his relation to and Interest in the
said noble Familys than their said Grandmother (who is now in an advanced
age, being seventy yeares old or thereabouts)."
Here, it is plain, was a very pretty family quarrel. No man likes his
mother-in-law to say that he has married the keeper of an Italian
eating-house, especially if the fact is correct; or that he is perverting
his young children's trust money. Neither was Lady Gould likely to be
pacified by her son-in-law's remark that she was now "in an advanced
age"; while his suggestion that his "noble" family would be of far more
advantage to his children than that of the respectable Goulds would have
the added sting of undeniable truth.
The next extant move in the fray bears date five months later, July 18
1721, and includes a petition by 'Dame Sarah Gould' that the children be
not removed from the places where they then were until the case be heard;
and Lady Gould adds that if the children's persons or estates be "under
ye management or power of ye said Mr Fielding and his now wife ye Estate
would not be managed to ye best advantage and their Education would not
be taken care of and there would be a great hazard that ye children might
be perverted to ye Romish Religion." Then follows an order in Chancery,
under the same date, "that ye eldest son of ye Defend't. Fielding ... be
continued at Eaton School where he now is and that ye rest of ye children
be continued where they now are."
The next document merely records the inclusion of Henry's five-year-old
brother Edmund among the plaintiffs. And this is followed by a brief
Chancery order of November 30 1721, that "ye, plaintiff Henry Fielding
who is not [_sic_] at Eaton Schoole be at liberty to go to ye said Dame
Sarah Gould, his Grandmother and next friend during ye usual time of
recess from School at Xmas."
After these Christmas holidays spent by Henry Fielding with Lady Gould,
doubtless at her house in Salisbury, the Chancery records pass on to the
April following, 1722, when the boy's uncle and trustee Davidge Gould
makes a statement "sworn at Sharpham Park," which concludes that the
witness hears and believes that Edmund Fielding "has already three
children by his present wife who is reputed to be of the Romish church."
In this same month comes another order from the court that Henry be at
liberty to leave Eton for the Whitsun holidays 1722, and to go to Lady
Gould's house. In May Edmund Fielding appears as "of the Parish of Saint
James, in the County of Middlesex," and also as his children's "next
Friend and Guardian." But two days later the long suit is concluded by
the decision of the court, and here Colonel Fielding is, as heretofore,
defendant, Lady Gould being the children's "next friend."
The case came before the Lord Chancellor on the 28th of May 1722, and was
"debated in the presence of learned Counsels." The trust was upheld, and
Edmund Fielding was required to deliver possession of the estate,
rendering account of the rents and profits thereof since the death of his
first wife; but he was to have "any and what" allowance for improvements,
and for the children's maintenance and education. And it was further
ordered that the children then at school continue at such schools till
further order, and that "upon any breaking up at ye usuall times they do
go and reside with ye Lady Gould their Grandmother that they may not be
under the influence of ye Defendant Fielding's Wife, who appeared to be a
papist." [7]
So Lady Gould, for all her seventy years, won her case at every point.
And Colonel Edmund Fielding did not only lose the guardianship of his six
children, and the administration of their estate. For there was, we
learn, in court, during the hearing, one Mrs Cottington, the plaintiffs
aunt, "alleadging that there was a debt of £700 due from ye Defendant
Fielding to her"; which debt she offered should be applied for the
benefit of her nephews and nieces. Whereupon the court ordered that if
Mrs Cottington proved the same, a Master in Chancery should purchase
therewith lands to be settled for the "Infants" in like manner as the
trust estate.
It may be only a coincidence, but £700 is the sum specifically mentioned
in the proceedings brought by Colonel Fielding in October 1722, five
months after the loss of his Chancery suit, against the cardsharper,
Robert Midford, who was then apparently threatening him with outlawry for
the recovery of the gambling debt begun, as we have seen, at Princes'
Coffee-house six years before. Had the colonel borrowed the £700 from Mrs
Cottington, with intent to discharge those debts; and, on being brought
to law by her (on her nephews' and nieces' behalf) for that debt, did it
occur to him to escape from the clutches of the psuedo "Captain" Midford
by pleading, as he now does in this Bill of 1722, that he "was tricked,"
and also "that gaming is illegal"? The latter plea has something of
unconscious humour in the mouth of a gentleman who had lately lost £500
at faro. With this last echo of the coffee-house of St James's, and of
the colonel's financial difficulties, that brave soldier, if somewhat
reckless gambler, the Hon. Edmund Fielding vanishes from sight, as far as
the life of his eldest son is concerned.
At the triumphant conclusion of his grandmother's suit Henry Fielding
would be just fifteen years of age, and it is impossible not to wonder
what side he took in these spirited family conflicts. No evidence,
however, on such points appears in the dry legal documents; and all that
we have for guide as to the effect in this impressionable time of his
boyhood of the long months of contest, and of his strictly ordered
holidays with his grandmother, is the declaration on the one hand that
"filial piety ... his nearest relations agree was a shining part of his
character," and on the other, the undeniably strong Protestant bias that
appears in his writing. Of his aunt, Mrs Cottington, we get one later
glimpse, when in 1723 she is made his trustee, in place of his uncle,
Davidge Gould, Mrs Cottington being then resident in Salisbury. At the
end of the following year, however, in December 1724, Davidge Gould
resumes his trusteeship, and with the record of that fact the disclosures
yielded by these ancient parchments as to Henry Fielding's stormy boyhood
come to an end.
From these records it becomes possible to gain some idea of the
surroundings of the great novelist's early youth. Before his mother's
death, indeed, when he was a boy of eleven, we already knew him as
suffering the rough jurisdiction of his Trulliberian tutor, Parson Oliver
of Motcombe village, and perhaps as under the wise and kindly guidance of
the good scholar-parson, who was later to win the affection and respect
of thousands of readers under the name of "Parson Adams." But now, for
the first time, we learn of the disastrous second marriage by which
Colonel Fielding, within two years of his first wife's death, placed a
lady of at least disputable social standing at the head of his household,
and one, moreover, whose Faith roused the bitter religious animosities of
that day. What wonder that the old Lady Gould strove fiercely to remove
Henry Fielding, and his sisters and young brother, from East Stour, when
a Madame Rasa was installed in her daughter's place. And accordingly, as
we have seen, even before the conclusion of the suit, Henry was
provisionally ordered by the Court of Chancery to spend his holidays with
his grandmother. Fielding would then be fourteen years old; and the
judge's decision six months later that future holidays should be passed
with Lady Gould, away from the influence of the second Mrs Fielding,
doubtless severed the lad's connection with his dubious stepmother for
the next six years. His home life, then, during the latter part of his
Eton schooling would be under Lady Gould's care; and was probably spent
at Salisbury.
Of his Eton life, from his entrance at the school, when twelve years old,
we know practically nothing. From the absence of his name on the college
lists, it may be inferred that he was an Oppidan. It is said that he gave
"distinguished proofs of strong and peculiar parts"; and that he left the
school with a good reputation as a classical scholar. And it is not
surprising to learn that here, as he himself tells us, his vigorous
energies made acquaintance with that 'birchen altar' at which most of the
best blood in England has been disciplined. "And thou," he cries, "O
Learning (for without thy Assistance nothing pure, nothing correct, can
Genius produce) do thou guide my Pen. Thee, in thy favourite Fields,
where the limpid gently rolling _Thames_ washes thy _Etonian_ banks, in
early Youth I have worshipped. To thee at thy birchen Altar, with true
_Spartan_ Devotion, I have sacrificed my Blood." [8] That the sacrifice
was not made in vain appears from the reputation with which Fielding left
Eton of being "uncommonly versed in the Greek authors and an early master
of the Latin classics"; and also from the yet better evidence of his own
pages. Long after these boyish days we find him, in the words of "The man
of the Hill," thus eloquently acknowledging the debt of humanity, and
doubtless his own, to those inestimable treasures bequeathed to the world
by ancient Greece: "These Authors, though they instructed me in no Science
by which Men may promise to themselves to acquire the least Riches, or
worldly Power, taught me, however, the Art of despising the highest
Acquisitions of both. They elevate the Mind, and steel and harden it
against the capricious Invasions of Fortune. They not only instruct in the
Knowledge of Wisdom, but confirm Men in her Habits, and demonstrate
plainly, that this must be our Guide, if we propose ever to arrive at the
greatest worldly Happiness; or to defend ourselves, with any tolerable
Security, against the Misery which everywhere surrounds and invests us."
[9] And that this was no mere figure of speech appears from that touching
picture which Murphy has left us of the brilliant wit, the 'wild' Harry
Fielding, when under the pressure of sickness and poverty, quietly reading
the _De Consolations_ of Cicero. His Plato accompanied him on the last sad
voyage to Lisbon; and his library, when catalogued for sale on behalf of
his widow and children, contained over one hundred and forty volumes of
the Greek and Latin classics.
Thus, supreme student and master as he was of "the vast authentic book of
nature," there is abundant proof that Fielding fulfilled his own axiom
that a "good share of learning" is necessary to the equipment of a
novelist. Let the romance writer's natural parts be what they may,
learning, he declared, "must fit them for use, must direct them in it,
lastly must contribute part at least of the materials." [10] Looking back
on such utterances by the 'father of the English Novel,' written at the
full height of his power, it is but natural to wonder if the boy's eager
application to Greek and Latin drudgery had in it something of
half-conscious preparation for the great part he was destined to play in
the history of English literature.
It is clear that Henry Fielding flung his characteristic energies
zealously into the acquirement of the classical learning proffered him at
Eton; but a fine scholarship, great possession though it be, was not the
only gain of his Eton years. Here, says Murphy in his formal
eighteenth-century phrasing, young Fielding had "the advantage of being
early known to many of the first people in the kingdom, namely Lord
Lyttelton, Mr Fox, Mr Pitt, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, and the late Mr
Winnington, etc."
Of these companions at Eton, George Lyttelton, afterwards known as the
"good Lord Lyttelton," statesman and orator, stands foremost by virtue of
the generous warmth of a friendship continued throughout the novelist's
chequered life. To Lyttelton _Tom Jones_ was dedicated; it was his
generosity, as generously acknowledged, that supplied Fielding, for a
time, with the very means of subsistence; and to him was due the
appointment, subsequently discharged with so much zealous labour, of
Magistrate for Westminster and Middlesex. It is recorded that George
Lyttelton's school exercises "were recommended as models to his
schoolfellows." Another Eton friend, Thomas Winnington, made some figure
in the Whig political world of the day; he was accredited by Horace
Walpole with having an inexhaustible good humour, and "infinitely more wit
than any man I ever knew." Of the friendship with Sir Charles Hanbury
Williams, of which we first hear at Eton, little is known, save the
curious episode of the recovery, many years after its author's death, of
Fielding's lost play _The Good-Natured Man>_, which had apparently been
submitted to Sir Charles, whose celebrity was great as a brilliant
political lampoonist. Of the acquaintance with Henry Fox, first Baron
Holland, we hear nothing in later life; but the name of the greatest of
all these Eton contemporaries, that of the elder Pitt, recurs in after
years as one of the party at Radway Grange, in Warwickshire, to whom
Fielding, after dinner, read aloud the manuscript of _Tom Jones_.
[11] A reference to his fellow-Etonian may be found in one of the
introductory chapters of that masterpiece, where Fielding, while again
advocating the claims of learning, takes occasion to pay this sonorous
tribute to Pitt's oratory: "Nor do I believe that all the imagination,
fire, and judgment of Pitt, could have produced those orations that have
made the senate of England in these our times a rival in eloquence to
Greece and Rome, if he had not been so well read in the writings of
Demosthenes and Cicero, as to have transferred their whole spirit into his
speeches and, with their spirit, their knowledge too."
However excellent a knowledge of the classics the youthful scholar took
away with him from Eton, the rigours of his studies do not appear to have
diminished that zest for life with which the very name of Henry Fielding
is invested. For the obscurity of these early years is for a moment
lifted to disclose the young genius as having already, before he was
nineteen, fallen desperately in love with a beautiful heiress in
Dorsetshire; and, moreover, as threatening bodily force to accomplish his
suit. The story, as indicated in the surviving outlines, might be the
draft for a chapter of _Tom Jones_. The scene is Lyme Regis. The chief
actors are Harry Fielding, scarce more than a schoolboy; a beautiful
heiress, Miss Sarah Andrew; [12] and her uncle, one Mr Andrew Tucker, a
timorous and crafty member of the local corporation. The handsome Etonian,
who had been for some time resident in the old town, fell madly in love,
it seems, with the lady, who is stated to have been his cousin on his
mother's side. The views of her guardian were, however, opposed to the
young man's suit, Mr Andrew Tucker mercenarily designing to secure the
heiress for his own son. Thereupon Harry Fielding is said to have made a
desperate attempt to carry the lady off by force, and that, moreover, "on
a Sunday, when she was on her way to Church." Further, the efforts of the
impetuous youth would seem to have extended to threatened assaults on the
person of his fair cousin's guardian, Mr Tucker; for we find that
affrighted worthy flying for protection to the arm of the law, as recorded
in the _Register Book_ of Lyme Regis, under date of the 14th November
1725:--"... Andrew Tucker, Gent., one of the Corporation, caused Henry
Fielding, Gent., and his servant or companion, Joseph Lewis--both now for
some time past residing in the borough--to be bound over to keep the
peace, as he was in fear of his life or some bodily hurt to be done or to
be procured to be done to him by H. Fielding and his man. Mr A. Tucker
feared that the man would beat, maim, or kill him." No words could more
aptly sum up this delightful story than those of Mr Austin Dobson: "a
charming girl, who is also an heiress; a pusillanimous guardian, with
ulterior views of his own; a handsome and high-spirited young suitor; a
faithful attendant ready to 'beat, maim or kill' on his master's behalf; a
frustrated elopement and a compulsory visit to the mayor--all these with
the picturesque old town of Lyme for a background, suggest a most
appropriate first act to Harry Fielding's biographical tragi-comedy."
[13] It is possible that Fielding's own pen supplied the conclusion to
this first act. For he tells us, in the preface to the _Miscellanies_,
that a version, in burlesque verse, of part of Juvenal's sixth satire was
originally sketched out before he was twenty, and that it was "all the
Revenge taken by an injured Lover." The story loses none of its zest,
moreover, when we remember that Harry Fielding was at this time still a
Ward of Chancery.
[1] Chancery Proceedings 1720 sqq. _Fielding_ v. _Fielding_. From the
records of this Chancery suit, instituted on behalf of Henry Fielding and
his brother and sisters, as minors, by their grandmother Lady Gould, are
taken the hitherto unpublished facts concerning the novelist's boyhood,
contained in this chapter. The original documents are preserved in the
Record Office.
[2] See Appendix A.
[3] By means of a legacy of £3000 left by her father for his daughter's
sole use, "her husband having nothing to doe with it."
[4] _History and Antiquities of Leicestershire_. J. Nichols. 1810. Vol.
iv. Part i. p. 292. Nichols does not state his authority for this
statement, and it is not confirmed by local records. See Hutchins'
_History of Dorset_ for the list of Stour Provost rectors.
[5] Chancery Proceedings, 1722. _Fielding_ v. _Midford_. Record Office.
[6] Edmund's name was added in October following.
[7] _Chancery Decrees and Order Books_. Record Office.
[8] Tom Jones, Book xiii. Introduction.
[9] Ibid., Book viii., ch. xiii.
[10] _Tom Jones_, Book ix. Introduction.
[11] See _infra_, chap. xi.
[12] Fifty years ago a portrait of the beautiful heiress, in the character
of Sophia Western, was still preserved at the house of Bellairs, near
Exeter, then the property of the Rhodes family. The present ownership of
the picture has, so far, eluded inquiry.
[13] _Fielding_, Austin Dobson, p. 202.