"COUNSELLOR FIELDING"
"Wit is generally observed to love to reside in empty pockets."
_Joseph Andrews_.
The last retort on Colley Cibber had scarcely been launched from the
columns of the _Champion_, when that intrepid 'Censor of Great Britain'
and indefatigable law student, _Captain Hercules Vinegar_, attained the
full dignities of a barrister of the Middle Temple. On June 20, 1740,
Fielding was called to the Bar; and on the same day the Benchers of his
Inn assigned to him chambers at No. 4 Pump Court, "up three pair of
stairs." This assignment, according to the wording of the Temple records,
was "for the term of his natural life." These chambers may still be seen,
with their low ceilings and panelled walls, very much to all appearance as
when tenanted by Harry Fielding. The windows of the sitting-room and
bedroom look out on to the beautiful old buildings of Brick Court, and
from the head of the staircase one looks across to the stately gilded
sundial of Pump Court, old even in Fielding's day, with its warning motto:
"Shadows we are and like shadows depart."
Here, in these lofty chambers, up their "three pair" of worn and narrow
stairs, Fielding donned his barrister's gown, and waited for briefs; and,
possessing as he did an imagination "fond of seizing every gay prospect,"
and natural spirits that gave him, as his cousin Lady Mary tells us,
cheerfulness in a garret, this summer of 1740 must have been full of
sanguine hopes. He was now thirty-three, and his splendid physique had not
yet become shattered by gout. He had gained, Murphy observes, no
inconsiderable reputation by the _Champion_; his position as a brilliant
political playwright had been long ago assured by _Pasquin_; the party to
whose patriotic interests he had devoted so much energy and wit was now
rapidly approaching power; and two years of eager application had equipped
him with 'no incompetent share of learning' for a profession in which, we
are told, he aspired to eminence. The swift disappointment of these brave
hopes, the fast coming years of sickness, distress, and grief endow the
old chambers with something of tragedy; but in June, 1740, the shadows
were still but a sententious word on the dial.
There is practically no surviving record of Fielding's activity as a
barrister. From Murphy we learn that his pursuit of the law was hampered
by want of means; and that, moreover, even his indomitable energies were
soon often forced to yield to disabling attacks of illness. So long as his
health permitted him he "attended with punctual assiduity" on the Western
circuit, and in term time at Westminster Hall. But gout rapidly "began to
make such assaults upon him as rendered it impossible for him to be as
constant at the bar as the laboriousness of his profession required," and
he could only follow the law in intervals of health. Under such
"severities of pain and want" he yet made efforts for success; and the
tribute rendered by his first biographer to the courage of those efforts
deserves quotation in full: "It will serve to give us an idea of the great
force of his mind, if we consider him pursuing so arduous a study under
the exigencies of family distress, with a wife and children, whom he
tenderly loved, looking up to him for subsistence, with a body lacerated
by the acutest pains, and with a mind distracted by a thousand avocations
and obliged for immediate supply to produce almost extempore a farce, a
pamphlet, or a newspaper." Murphy's careless pen seems here to confuse the
student years with those of assiduous effort at the Bar; and the extempore
farces are, judging by the dates of Fielding's collected plays, no more
than a rhetorical flourish: but there seems no reason to doubt the
essential truth of this picture of the vigorous struggles of the sanguine,
witty, and not unlearned barrister, ambitious of distinction, and always
sensitively anxious as to the maintenance of his wife and children. We may
see him attending the Western circuit in March and again in August, riding
from Winchester to Salisbury, thence to Dorchester and Exeter, and on to
Launceston, Taunton, Bodmin, Wells or Bristol as the case might be;
constant in his appearance at Westminster; and supplementing his briefs by
political pamphlets written in the service of an Opposition supported by
the intellect and integrity of the day.
It is inexplicable that no records, in the letters or diaries of his
brother lawyers, should have come down to us of circuits, enlivened by the
wit of Harry Fielding; that practically all traces of his professional
work should be lost; and that concerning the many friendships which he is
recorded to have made at the Bar we should know practically nothing beyond
his own cordial acknowledgment of the lawyers' response, three years after
his call, to the subscription for the _Miscellanies_. In the preface to
those volumes he writes: "I cannot however forbear mentioning my sense of
the Friendship shown me by a Profession of which I am a late and unworthy
Member, and from whose Assistance I derive more than half the Names which
appear to this subscription." All that we have to add to this, is the
unconscious humour of Murphy's observation that the friendships Fielding
met with "in the course of his studies, and indeed through the remainder
of his life from the gentlemen of the legal profession in general, and
particularly from some who have since risen to be the first ornaments of
the law, will ever do honour to his memory." Had the names of these worthy
'ornaments' been preserved, posterity could now give them due recognition
as having been honoured by the friendship of Henry Fielding. [1]
Fielding in his habit, as he lived, is for ever eluding us. His tall
figure vanishes behind the prolific playwright, the exuberant politician,
the truculent journalist, the indefatigable magistrate, the great creative
genius. But at no point does the wittiest man of his day, and a lawyer of
some repute--'Mr Fielding is allowed to have acquired a respectable share
of jurisprudence'--escape us so completely as during these years of
'punctual assiduity' at the Bar. His very domicile is unknown, after the
surrender of those pleasant chambers in Pump Court, on November 28 1740.
The political activities of "Counsellor Fielding" stand out far more
clearly than do the legal labours of these years of struggle at the Bar.
The year of his call, 1740, was one of constant embarrassment for Sir
Robert Walpole, whose long enjoyment of single power was now at last
drawing to a miserable close. The conduct of the Spanish War was
arraigned, and suggestions were made that the Government were in secret
alliance with the enemy. When the news came, in March, that Walpole's
parliamentary opponent, the bluff Admiral Vernon, had captured Porto Bello
from Spain, with six ships only, the public rejoicing and votes of
congratulation were so many attacks on the peace-at-any-price Minister. A
powerful fleet, designed against Spain, lay inactive in Torbay the greater
part of the summer, through (alleged) contrary winds. And when Parliament
met in November 1740, an onslaught by the Duke of Argyll in the Lords
paved the way for the celebrated attack on Sir Robert in the Commons,
known as "The Motion" of February 13, 1741. A fine political cartoon
published in the following month, and here reproduced, in which Walpole
appears as mocking at the death and burial of this same "Motion" of
censure (which the House had rejected), places Fielding in the forefront
of the Opposition procession. The dead "Motion" is being carried to the
"Opposition" family vault, already occupied by Jack Cade and other
"reformers"; and the bier is preceded by five standard-bearers, sadly
carrying the insignia of the party's papers. Among these, and second only
to the famous _Craftsman_, comes Fielding's tall figure, bearing aloft a
standard inscribed _The Champion_, and emblazoned with that terrible club
of _Captain Hercules Vinegar_, which, we may recall, was always ready to
"fall on any knave in company." Behind the bier hobbles, clearly, the old
Duchess of Marlborough; and Walpole's fat figure stands in the foreground,
laughing uproariously at this "Funeral of Faction." In the doggerel verses
beneath this cartoon, it is very plainly hinted that "old Sarah," and the
Opposition, were in league with the Stewarts. In this historic debate, for
which members secured seats at six o'clock in the morning, the vote of
censure on "the _one person_" arraigned was defeated, Sir Robert once
again securing a majority, and so "the Motion" as the cartoonist depicts,
died "of a Disappointment." Another cartoon commemorating this ill-fated
effort is instructive as showing, again in the foreground of the fight, a
figure wearing a barrister's wig, gown, and bands, and inscribed with the
words _Pasquin_ and _The Champion_. The Opposition Leader, Pulteney, leads
both the _Pasquin_ figure, and another representing the paper _Common
Sense_, literally by the nose with the one hand, while with the other he
neatly catches, on his drawn sword, Walpole's organ the _Gazetteer_. In
doggerel verses attached to the print Fielding is complimented with the
following entire verse to himself:--
"Then the Champion of the Age,
Being Witty, wise, and Sage,
Comes with Libells on the Stage."
This _Pasquin_ figure has none of the personal characteristics of
Fielding, neither his "length of nose" nor his stately stature, so well
suggested in the former print; but, lay figure though it be, it symbolises
no less clearly the prominent part he played in these final political
struggles of 1741. Also the lawyer's dress with which Fielding is here
signified is noteworthy; and similar acknowledgment of his new dignities
may be seen in the reference (in a copy of Walpole's _Gazetteer_ for 1740)
to the attacks levelled on Sir Robert by "Captain Vinegar--_i.e._
Counsellor F---d--g."
These popular indications of Fielding's activity in the fighting ranks of
the Opposition, during this last year of Walpole's domination, are
supplemented by the evidence of his own pen. As early as January 1741, and
while the grand Parliamentary attack of the 13th of February was but
brewing, he published an eighteenpenny pamphlet, in verse, satirising Sir
Robert's lukewarm conduct of the war with Spain. To the title of _The
Vernoniad_, there was added a lengthy mock-title in Greek, the whole being
presented as a lost fragment by Homer, describing, in epic style, the
mission of one "Mammon" sent by Satan to baffle the fleets of a nation
engaged in war with _Iberia_. "Mammon" is a perfectly obvious satirical
sketch of Walpole himself, in the execution of which the hand that had
drawn the corrupt fiddler "Mr Quidam" and the tipsy "Mr Pillage" for the
Haymarket stage, has in no wise lost its cunning. "Mammon" (Walpole was
reputed to have amassed much wealth) hides his palace walls by heaps of
"ill-got Pictures." The pictures collected at Houghton, the Minister's
pretentious Norfolk seat, were famous; and the notes to the "Text" are
careful to depict, in illustration, "some rich Man without the least Taste
having purchased a Picture at an immense Price, lifting up his eyes to it
with Wonder and Astonishment, without being able to discover wherein its
true Merit lies." "Mammon" declares virtue to be but a name, and his
wonted eloquence is bribery. Sir Robert asserted that every man has his
price. "Mammon" preserves dulness and ignorance, "while Wit and Learning
starve." Walpole's illiterate tastes were notorious. At the close of the
poem, "Mammon" accomplishes the behest of his master, Satan, by bribing
contrary winds to drive back the English ships (a satire on Walpole's
conduct of the war); and he finally returns to hell, and "in his Palace
keeps a _three Weeks'_ Feast." Sir Robert it may be noted usually
entertained for three weeks, in the spring, at Houghton. The whole is a
slashing example of the robust eighteenth-century political warfare,
polished by constant classical allusions and quotations; and doubtless it
was read with delight in the coffee houses of the Town in that critical
winter of 1740-1741. Two characteristic allusions must not be omitted.
Even in the heat of party hard hitting Fielding finds time for a thrust at
Colley Cibber, whose prose it seems was in several places by no means to
be comprehended till "explained by the _Herculean_ Labours of Captain
_Vinegar_" And there is a pleasant reference to "my friend Hogarth the
exactest Copier of Nature."
In this first month of 1741, Fielding published yet another poetical
pamphlet for his party, but of a less truculent energy. _True Greatness_
is a poem inscribed to a recruit in the Opposition ranks, the celebrated
George Bubb Dodington; and when the eulogiums offered by the poet to his
political leaders, Argyll, Carteret, Chesterfield, and Lyttelton, to all
of whom are ascribed that "True Greatness" which "lives but in the Noble
Mind," are completed by a description of Dodington as irradiating a blaze
of virtues, this particular pamphlet becomes somewhat rueful reading. For
Dodington was, if report speaks true, a pliant politician as well as an
ineffable coxcomb, although it must be admitted that he won eulogies and
compliments alike from the perfect integrity of Lyttelton, and the
honourable pen of James Thomson. Even Fielding's glowing lines do not
outstrip Thomson's panegyric in _The Seasons_.
A more enduring interest however than the merits or demerits of a
Dodington, lies in this shilling pamphlet. In it is clearly foreshadowed
Fielding's great ironic outburst on false greatness, given to the world a
few years later in the form of the history of that Napoleon in villany,
the "great" Mr Jonathan Wild. In the medium of stiff couplets (verse being
"a branch of Writing" which Fielding admits "I very little pretend to")
the subject-matter of the magnificent irony of _Jonathan Wild_ is already
sketched. Here the spurious "greatness" of inhuman conquerors, of droning
pedants, of paltry beaus, of hermits proud of their humility, is
mercilessly laid bare; and something is disclosed of the "piercing
discernment" of that genius which, Murphy tell us, "saw the latent sources
of human actions."
We have seen indications in Murphy's careless pages that these few years
of Fielding's assiduous efforts at the Bar were years burdened by
"severities of want and pain." It is difficult not to admit a reference to
some such personal experiences in a passage in this same poem. The lines
in question describe the Poet going hungry and thirsty
"As down Cheapside he meditates the Song"....
a "great tatter'd Bard," treading cautiously through the streets lest he
meet a bailiff, oppressed with "want and with contempt," his very liberty
to "wholesome Air" taken from him, yet possessing the greatness of mind
that no circumstances can touch, and the power to bestow a fame that shall
outlive the gifts of kings. This latter claim foreshadows the magnificent
apostrophe in _Tom Jones_ on that unconquerable force of genius, able to
confer immortality both on the poet, and the poet's theme. Was the 'great
tatter'd Bard,' cautiously treading the streets, little esteemed, and yet
the conscious possessor of true greatness (did not the author of _Tom
Jones_ rely with confidence on receiving honour from generations yet
unborn), none other than the tall figure of Fielding himself? At least we
know that soon after this year he writes of having lately suffered
accidents and waded through distresses, sufficient to move the pity of his
readers, were he "fond enough of Tragedy" to make himself "the Hero of
one."
One of the rare fragments of Fielding's autograph, [2] refers both to this
pamphlet, and to the _Vernoniad_:
"Mr Nourse,
"Please to deliver Mr Chappell 50 of [crossed out: my] [_sic_] True
Greatness and 50 of the Vernoniad.
Y'rs
"Hen. Ffielding.
"_April_ 20 1741."
In June of this year occurred the death of General Edmund Fielding,
briefly noticed in the _London Magazine_ as that of an officer who "had
served in the late Wars against _France_ with much Bravery and
Reputation." The General's own struggles to support his large family
probably prevented his death affecting the circumstances of his eldest
son. In the same month Fielding appears as attending a "Meeting of the
Partners in the Champion," held at the Feathers Tavern, on June 29. The
list of the partners present at the Feathers is given as follows:--[3]
Present
Mr Fielding
Mr Nourse
Mr Hodges
Mr Chappelle
Mr Cogan
Mr Gilliver
Mr Chandler
The business recorded was the sale of the "Impressions of the Champion in
two Vollumes, 12'o, No. 1000." The impression was put up to the Company by
auction, and was knocked down to Mr Henry Chappelle for £110, to be paid
to the partners. The majority of the partners are declared by the Minutes
to have confirmed the bargain; the minority, as appears from the list of
signatures, being strictly that of one, Henry Fielding. After this
dissension Fielding's name ceases to appear at the _Champion_ meetings;
and as he himself states that he left off writing for the paper from this
very month the evidence certainly points to a withdrawal on his part in
June 1741 from both the literary and the business management of the paper.
The edition referred to in the Minutes is doubtless that advertised in the
_London Daily Post_ a few days before the meeting of the partners, as a
publication of the _Champion_ "in two neat Pocket Volumes." [4]
Meanwhile the whole force of the Opposition was thrown into the battle of
a General Election; and it is interesting to note that Pitt stood for the
seat for Fielding's boyish home, and the home of his wife, that of Old
Sarum. The elections went largely against Walpole, and by the end of June
defeat was prophesied for a Minister who would only be supported by a
majority of sixteen.
It is somewhat inexplicable that at this, the very moment of the
approaching victory of his party Fielding appears to have withdrawn from
all journalistic work. "I take this Opportunity to declare in the most
solemn Manner," he writes, in after years, "I have long since (as long as
from _June_ 1741) desisted from writing one Syllable in the _Champion_, or
any other public Paper." And yet more unexpected is the fact that six
months later, during the last weeks of Walpole's failing power, a rumour
should be abroad that Fielding was assisting his old enemy. In one of his
rare references to his private life, that in the Preface to the
_Miscellanies_, he seeks to clear himself from unjust censures "as well on
account of what I have not writ, as for what I have"; and, as an instance
of such baseless aspersions, he relates that, in this winter of 1741, "I
received a letter from a Friend, desiring me to vindicate myself from two
very opposite Reflections, which two opposite Parties thought fit to cast
on me, _viz_. the one of writing in the _Champion_ (tho' I had not then
writ in it for upwards of half a year) the other, of writing in the
Gazetteer, in which I never had the honour of inserting a single Word."
What can have occurred, in the bewildering turmoil of that
eighteenth-century party strife, that the author of _Pasquin_, the
possessor of "Captain Vinegar's" Herculean Club, should have to vindicate
himself from a charge of writing in the columns of Walpole's _Gazetteer_.
During these last months of Sir Robert's power his Cabinet was much
divided, and two of his Ministers were in active revolt; possibly rumour
assigned the services of the witty pen of Counsellor Fielding to these
Opposition Ministerialists. But that some change did indeed take place in
Fielding's political activities, in these last six months of 1741 is
obvious from his withdrawal from writing in any "Public" paper; and from
passages in the last political pamphlet known to have come from his pen.
This pamphlet, entitled _The Opposition. A Vision_, was published in the
winter of 1741, a winter of severe illness, and of "other circumstances"
which, as he tells us, "served as very proper Decorations" to the sickbeds
of himself, his wife, and child. It is a lively attack on the divided
councils and leaders of the Opposition, thrown into the form of a dream,
caused by the author's falling asleep over "a large quarto Book intituled
'An apology for the Life of Mr Colley Gibber, Comedian.'" In his dream
Fielding meets the Opposition, in the form of a waggon, drawn by very
ill-matched asses, the several drivers of which have lost their way. The
luggage includes the Motion for 1741, and a trunk containing the
_Champion_ newspaper. One passenger protests that he has been hugely
spattered by the "Dirt" of the "last Motion," and that he will get out,
rather than drive through more dirt. A gentleman of "a meagre aspect" (is
he the lean Lyttelton?) leaves the waggon; and another observes that the
asses "appear to me to be the worst fed Asses I ever beheld ... that long
sided Ass they call _Vinegar_, which the Drivers call upon so often to
_gee up_, and _pull lustily_, I never saw an Ass with a worse Mane, or a
more shagged Coat; and that grave Ass yoked to him, which they name
_Ralph_, and who pulls and brays like the Devil, Sir, he does not seem to
have eat since the hard Frost. [5] Surely, considering the wretched Work
they are employed in, they deserve better Meat."
The longsided ass, Vinegar, with the worst of manes and the most shagged
coat, short even of provender, recalls the picture, drawn twelve months
previously, of the great hungry tatter'd Bard; and the inference seems
fair enough that for Fielding politics were no lucrative trade. A more
creditable inference, in those days of universal corruption, it may be
added, would be hard to find. The honour of a successful party writer who
yet remained poor in the year 1741, must have been kept scrupulously
clean. The _Vision_ proceeds to show the waggon, with two new sets of
asses from Cornwall and Scotland (the elections had gone heavily against
Walpole in both these districts), suddenly turning aside from the "Great
Country Road" (the Opposition was known as the Country Party); and the
protesting passengers are told that the end of their journey is "St
James." Some of the asses, flinching, are "well whipt"; but the waggon
leaves the dreamer and many of its followers far behind. Suddenly a Fat
Gentleman's coach stops the way. The drivers threaten to drive over the
coach, when one of the asses protests that the waggon is leaving the
service of the country, and going aside on its own ends, and that "the
Honesty of even an Ass would start" at being used for some purposes. The
waggon is all in revolt and confusion, when the Fat Gentleman, who
appeared to have "one of the pleasantest and best natured Countenances I
ever beheld," at last had the asses unharness'd, and turned into a
delicious meadow, where they fell to feeding, as after "long Abstinence."
Finally, the pleasant-faced fat gentleman's coach proceeds on the way from
which the waggon had deviated, carrying with it some of the former drivers
of the same; the mob burn the derelict obstructing vehicle; and their
noise, and the stink and smoke of the conflagration wake the dreamer.
In this last word of Fielding's active political career (for his later
anti-Jacobite papers are concerned rather with Constitutional and
Protestant, than with party strife), a retirement from political
collar-work is certainly signified. His reasons for such a step escape us
in the mist of those confused and heated conflicts. His detestation of
Walpole's characteristic methods may very well have roused his ever ready
fighting instincts, whereas, once Walpole's fall was practically assured
the weak forces of the Opposition (William Pitt being yet many years from
power) could have availed but little to enlist his penetrating intellect.
And he may by now have found that politics afforded, in those days, but
scanty support to an honourable pen.
But supposition, in lack of further evidence, is fruitless; all that we
can clearly perceive is that this winter of sickness and distress marks a
final severance from party politics. The hungry 'hackney writer' of the
lean sides and shagged coat, if not, indeed, turned to graze in the fat
meadow of his dream, was at last freed from an occupation that could but
shackle the genius now ready to break forth in the publication of _Joseph
Andrews_.
[1] A tantalising reference to one such acquaintance occurs in Lord
Campbell's _Lives of the Chancellors_. Vol. v. p. 357. In notes made by
Lord Camden's nephew, George Hardinge, for a proposed Life of the Lord
Chancellor there is this entry: "formed an acquaintance ... with Henry
Fielding ... called to the Bar."
[2] Now in the possession of W. K. Bixby, Esq., of St Louis, U.S.A.
[3] In a manuscript copy of the Minutes, in the possession of the present
writer.
[4] _London Daily Post_, June 18-26, 1741.
[5] The hard frost would be the terrible preceding winter of 1739-40, a
winter long remembered for the severity of the cold, the cost of
provisions, and the suffering of the poor.