THE _Miscellanies_ AND _Jonathan Wild_
"Is there on earth a greater object of contempt than the poor
scholar to a splendid beau; unless perhaps the splendid beau to
the poor scholar."
_Covent Garden Journal_, No. 61.
If the 'sunrise' of Fielding's genius did indeed shine forth on the
publication of _Joseph Andrews_, it was a sunrise attended by dark clouds.
For, with the appearance of these two little volumes, we enter on the most
obscure period of the great novelist's life, and on that in which he
appears to have suffered the severest 'invasions of Fortune.'
As regards the winter immediately preceding the appearance of that joyous
epic of the highway, he himself has told us that he was 'laid up in the
gout, with a favourite Child dying in one Bed, and my Wife in a Condition
very little better, on another, attended with other Circumstances, which
served as very proper Decorations to such a Scene.' In the following
February, an entry in the registers of St Martin's in the Fields records
the burial of a child "Charlott Fielding." So it is probable that the very
month of the appearance of his first novel brought a private grief to
Fielding the poignancy of which may be measured by his frequent betrayals
of an anxious affection for his children.
To such distresses of sickness and anxiety, there was now, doubtless,
added the further misery of scanty means. For a few months later an
advertisement (hitherto overlooked) appears in the _Daily Post_, showing
that Fielding was already eagerly pushing forward the publication of the
_Miscellanies_, that incoherent collection which is itself proof enough
that necessity alone had called it into being. "The publication of these
Volumes," he says, "hath been hitherto retarded by the Author's
indisposition last Winter, and a train of melancholy Accidents, scarce to
be parallel'd; but he takes this opportunity to assure his Subscribers
that he will most certainly deliver them within the time mentioned in his
last receipts, viz. by the 25th December next." [1]
We may take it, then, that the first six months of 1742 were attended by
no easy circumstances; and, accordingly, during these months Fielding's
hard-worked pen produced no less than three very different attempts to win
subsistence from those humoursome jades the nine Muses. To take these
efforts in order of date, first comes, in March, his sole invocation of
the historic Muse, the _Full Vindication of the Dutchess Dowager of
Marlborough_, published almost before Joseph Andrews was clear of the
printers, and sold at the modest price of one shilling. We learn from the
title page that the _Vindication_ was called forth by a "late _scurrilous_
Pamphlet," containing "_base_ and _malicious_ Invectives" against Her
Grace. Together with Fielding's natural love for fighting, a family tie
may have given him a further incitement to draw his pen on behalf of the
aged Duchess. For his first cousin, Mary Gould, the only child of his
uncle James Gould, M.P. for Dorchester, had married General Charles
Churchill, brother to the great Duke. Whether this cousinship by marriage
led to any personal acquaintance between 'old Sarah' and Harry Fielding we
do not know; and the muniment room at Blenheim affords no trace of any
correspondence between the Duchess and her champion. But certainly the
_Vindication_ lacks nothing of personal warmth. Fielding tells us that he
has never contemplated the character of that 'Glorious Woman' but with
admiration; and he defends her against the attacks of her opponents
through forty strenuous pages, in which the curious may still hear the
echoes of the controversies that raged round the Duke and his Duchess,
their mistress Queen Anne, and other actors of the Revolution. The
_Vindication_ appeared in March; and a second edition was called for
during the year. As far as Millar's payment goes Fielding, as appears from
the assignment in _Joseph Andrews_, received only £5; and it is to be
feared that the Duchess (who is said to have paid the historian Hooke
£5000 for his assistance in the production of her own celebrated pamphlet)
placed but little substantial acknowledgment in Fielding's lean purse. Her
champion at any rate had, within three years, modified the views expressed
in this _Vindication_, concerning the munificence of Her Grace's private
generosity; for in his journal the _True Patriot_, there occurs the
following obituary notice, "A Man supposed to be a Pensioner of the late
Duchess of Marlborough.... He is supposed to have been Poor."
This same month of March marked Fielding's final severance with the
_Champion_. The partners of that paper, meeting on March the 1st, ordered
"that Whereas Henry Fielding Esq., did Originally possess Two Sixteenth
Shares of the Champion as a Writer in the said paper and having withdrawn
himself from that Service for above Twelve Months past and refused his
Assistance in that Capacity since which time Mr Ralph has solely
Transacted the said Business. It is hereby Declared that the said Writing
Shares shall devolve on and be vested in Mr James Ralph." [2] It is
curious that Fielding did not add to his impoverished exchequer by selling
his _Champion_ shares.
Having sought assistance from the Muse of history in March, Fielding
returns to his old charmer the dramatic Muse in May; assisting in that
month to produce a farce, at Drury Lane, entitled _Miss Lucy in Town_. In
this piece, he tells us, he had a very small share. He also received for
it a very small remuneration; £10, 10s. being recorded as the price paid
by Andrew Millar.
In the following month Fielding's inexhaustible energies were off on a new
tack, producing, in startling contrast to _Miss Lucy_, a classical work,
executed in collaboration with his friend the Rev. William Young,
otherwise Parson Adams. The two friends contemplated a series of
translations of all the eleven comedies of Aristophanes; adorned by notes
containing "besides a full Explanation of the Author, a compleat History
of the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Greeks particularly of the
Athenians"; and in June they inaugurated their scheme with the work in
question, a translation of the Plutus.[3] William Young, says Hutchins,
"had much learning which was the cement of Mr Fielding's connexion with
him"; and Fielding's own scholarship, irradiated by his wit, would
assuredly have made him an ideal translator of Greek comedy. But the
public of 1742 appears to have afforded very little encouragement to this
scheme, preferring that "pretty, dapper, brisk, smart, pert, Dialogue" of
their own comedies, to which allusion is made in the authors' preface.
The rest of the year shows nothing from a pen somewhat exhausted perhaps
with the production of _Joseph Andrews_ of the historical _Vindication_,
and of parts of a Drury Lane farce and of the _Plutus_, all within five
months. And the winter following, in which the promised _Miscellanies_
should have appeared, brought, in the renewed illness of his wife, an
anxiety that paralysed even Fielding's buoyant vigour. This we learn from
his own touching apology for the further delay of those volumes; a delay
due, their author tells us, to "the dangerous Illness of one from whom I
draw all the solid Comfort of my Life, during the greatest Part of this
Winter. This, as it is most sacredly true, so will it, I doubt not,
sufficiently excuse the Delay to all who know me." [4] Early in the
following year, after this second winter of crushing anxiety, and under an
urgent pressure for means, Fielding tried again his familiar _rôle_ of
popular dramatist, giving his public the husks they preferred, in the
comedy of the _Wedding Day_. This comedy was produced at Drury Lane on the
17th of February 1743.
If Fielding had failed to descend to the taste of the Town in offering
them Aristophanes, he flung them in the _Wedding Day_ something too
imperfect for acceptance, even by the 'critic jury of the pit,' And the
bitter humour in which he was now shackling his genius to the honourable
task of immediate bread-winning, or in his own words to the part of
"hackney writer," comes out clearly enough in the well-known anecdote of
the first night of this comedy. In Murphy's words, Garrick, then a new
player, just taking the Town by storm, "told Mr Fielding he was
apprehensive that the audience would make free in a particular passage;
adding that a repulse might so flurry his spirits as to disconcert him for
the rest of the night, and therefore begged that it might be omitted. 'No,
d--mn 'em,' replied the bard, 'if the scene is not a good one, let them
find _that_ out.' Accordingly the play was brought on without alteration,
and, just as had been foreseen, the disapprobation of the house was
provoked at the passage before objected to; and the performer alarmed and
uneasy at the hisses he had met with, retired into the green-room, where
the author was indulging his genius, and solacing himself with a bottle of
champaign." Fielding, continues Murphy, had by this time drank pretty
plentifully, and "'_What's the matter, Garrick?_' says he, '_what are they
hissing now?_' Why the scene that I begged you to retrench; I knew it
would not do; and they have so frightened me that I shall not be able to
collect myself again the whole night. _Oh! d--mn 'em_, replies the author,
_they HAVE found it out, have they!_" That Fielding should be scornfully
indifferent to the judgment of the pit on work forced from him by
overwhelming necessities, and which his own judgment condemned, is a
foregone conclusion; but that he suffered keenly in having to produce
imperfect work, and was jealously anxious to clear his reputation, as a
writer, in the matter of this particular comedy, is no less apparent from
the very unusual personal explanation he offered for it, soon after the
brief run of the play was over. For no man was more shy of
autobiographical revelations. His biographers are continually reduced to
gleaning stray hints, here and there, concerning his private life.
[5] And therefore we can measure by this emergence from a habitual
personal reticence the soreness with which he now published work unworthy
of his genius. "Mr Garrick," Fielding tells us, speaking of this
distressed winter of 1742-3 "... asked me one Evening, if I had any play
by me; telling me he was desirous of appearing in a new Part [and] ... as
I was full as desirous of putting Words into his Mouth, as he could appear
to be of speaking them, I mentioned [a] Play the very next morning to Mr
_Fleetwood_ who embraced my Proposal so heartily, that an Appointment was
immediately made to read it to the Actors who were principally to be
concerned in it." On consideration, however, this play appeared to
Fielding to need more time for perfecting, and also to afford very little
opportunity to Garrick. So, recollecting that he still had by him a play
which, although 'the third Dramatic Performance' he ever attempted,
contained a character that would keep the audience's "so justly favourite
Actor almost eternally before their Eyes," he decided, with characteristic
impetuosity, to a change at the last moment. "I accordingly," he writes,
"sat down with a Resolution to work Night and Day, owing to the short Time
allowed me, which was about a Week, in altering and correcting this
Production of my more Juvenile Years; when unfortunately the extreme
Danger of Life into which a Person, very dear to me, was reduced, rendered
me incapable of executing my Task. To this Accident alone I have the
vanity to apprehend, the Play owes most of the glaring Faults with which
it appeared.... Perhaps, it may be asked me why then did I suffer a Piece
which I myself knew was imperfect, to appear? I answer honestly and
freely, that Reputation was not my Inducement; and that I hoped, faulty as
it was, it might answer a much more solid, and in my unhappy situation, a
much more urgent Motive." This hope was, alas, frustrated; not even the
brilliancy of a cast which included Garrick, Mrs Pritchard, Macklin, and
Peg Woffington, could carry the _Wedding Day_ over its sixth night; and
the harassed author received 'not £50 from the House for it.' The comedy
is a coarsely moral attack on libertinism, a fact which probably, in no
wise added to the popularity of the play in the pit and boxes of 1743.
A doggerel prologue, both written and spoken by Macklin, gives an
excellent picture of the playhouse humours, and of the wild pit, of those
exuberant days; and contains moreover the following sound advice,
addressed to Fielding
"Ah! thou foolish follower of the ragged Nine
You'd better stuck to honest Abram Adams, by half;
He, in spite of critics can make your Readers laugh."
The next publication of these lean years was the _Miscellanies_, a
collection of mingled prose, verse, and drama, of which the only
connecting link seems to be the urgent need of money which forced so
heterogenous a medley from so great an artist. These long delayed volumes
appeared, probably, in April, and were, says Fielding, composed with a
frequent "Degree of Heartache." They include the lover's verses of his
early youth; philosophical, satiric, and didactic essays; a reprint of the
political effusion dedicated to Dodington; a few plays; the fragment
entitled _A Journey from this World to the Next_; and the splendid ironic
outburst on villany, _Jonathan Wild_.
The _Preface_, largely occupied as it is with those private circumstances
which forced the hasty production of the _Wedding Day_, has other matter
of even greater interest for the biographer. Thus Fielding's sensitive
care of his reputation in essential matters appears in the fiery denial
here given to allegations of publishing anonymous scandals: "I never was,
nor will be the Author of anonymous Scandal on the private History or
Family of any Person whatever. Indeed there is no Man who speaks or thinks
with more detestation of the modern custom of Libelling. I look on the
practice of stabbing a Man's Character in the Dark, to be as base and as
barbarous as that of stabbing him with a Poignard in the same manner; nor
have I ever been once in my Life guilty of it." Here too, he marks his
abhorrence of that 'detestable Vice' hypocrisy, which vice he was, before
long, to expose utterly in the person of Blifil in _Tom Jones_. His happy
social temperament is betrayed in the characteristic definition of good
breeding as consisting in "contributing with our utmost Power to the
Satisfaction and Happiness of all about us." And in these pages we have
Fielding's philosophy of _goodness_ and _greatness_, delivered in words
that already display an unrivalled perfection of style. Speaking of his
third volume, that poignant indictment of devilry the _Life of Mr Jonathan
Wild the Great_, it is thus that Fielding exposes the iniquity of villains
in "great" places:--"But without considering _Newgate_ as no other than
Human Nature with its mask off, which some very shameless Writers have
done, a Thought which no Price should purchase me to entertain, I think we
may be excused for suspecting, that the splendid Palaces of the Great, are
often no other than _Newgate_ with the Mask on. Nor do I know anything
which can raise an honest Man's Indignation higher than that the same
Morals should be in one Place attended with all imaginable Misery and
Infamy and in the other with the highest Luxory and Honour. Let any
impartial Man in his Senses be asked, for which of these two Places a
Composition of Cruelty, Lust, Avarice, Rapine, Insolence, Hypocrisy, Fraud
and Treachery, was best fitted, surely his Answer must be certain and
immediate; and yet I am afraid all these Ingredients glossed over with
Wealth and a Title, have been treated with the highest Respect and
Veneration in the one, while one or two of them have been condemned to the
Gallows in the other."
Here is the converse of that insight which could discern goodness under a
ragged cassock, or in a swearing postilion. And, having discerned the true
nature of such Great Men, Fielding proceeds to point out that "However the
Glare of Riches and Awe of Title may terrify the Vulgar; nay however
Hypocrisy may deceive the more Discerning, there is still a Judge in every
Man's Breast, which none can cheat or corrupt, tho' perhaps it is the only
uncorrupt thing about him"; that nothing is so preposterous as that men
should laboriously seek to be villains; and that this Judge, inflexible
and honest "however polluted the Bench on which he sits," always bestows
on the spurious Great the penalty of fear, an evil which "never can in any
manner molest the Happiness" of the "Enjoyments of Innocence and Virtue."
The subsequent philosophic dissertation on the qualities of goodness and
greatness is interesting for such passages as the definition of a good man
as one possessing "Benevolence, Honour, Honesty, and Charity"; and the
fine declaration that of the passion of Love "goodness hath always
appeared to me the only true and proper Object." And the very springs of
action underlying half at least of each of the three great novels, and
almost every page of _Jonathan Wild_, are revealed in the final
declaration of the writer's intention to expose in these pages vice
stripped of its false colours; to show it "in its native Deformity." As
the native and stripped deformity of vice is perhaps not often fully
apprehended and certainly is very seldom exposed in our own age, Fielding,
by the very sincerity and fire of his morality, doubtless loses many a
modern reader.
It is in the third volume of the _Miscellanies_, a volume completely
occupied by _Jonathan Wild_, that Fielding first fully reveals himself as
public moralist. And in this Rogue's progress to the gallows he displays
so concentrated a zeal, that nothing short of his genius and his humour
could have saved these pages from the dullness of the professional
reformer. For the little volume consists of a relentless exposure of the
deformity and folly of vice. Here the foul souls of Wild and his
associates, stripped of all the glamour of picturesque crime, stand
displayed in their essential qualities, with the result that even the
pestilential air of thieves' slums, of 'night cellars,' and of Newgate
purlieus, an air which hangs so heavy over every page, falls back into
insignificance before the loathsomeness of the central figure. A few years
later, in the preface to _Tom Jones_, Fielding formally asserted his
belief that the beauty of goodness needed but to be seen 'to attract the
admiration of mankind'; in _Jonathan Wild_ he appears to be already at
work on the converse doctrine, that if the deformity of vice be but
stripped naked, abhorrence must ensue. Such a naked criminal is Wild; and
in the contemplation of his vices, as in the case of the arch hypocrite
Blifil, in _Tom Jones_, and of the shameless sensualist "My Lord," in
_Amelia_, Fielding's characteristic compassion for the faults of hard
pressed humanity is, for the time, scorched up in the fierceness of his
anger and scorn at deliberate cruelty, avarice and lust. Under the spell
of Fielding's power of painting the devil in his native blackness, we feel
that for such as Wild hanging is too handsome a fate. It is easy for his
Newgate chaplain to assert that "nothing is so sinful as sin"; it takes a
great genius and a great moralist to convince us, as in this picture, that
nothing is so deformed or so contemptible. The dark places of _Jonathan
Wild_ receive some light in the character of the good jeweller, in the
tender scenes between that honest ruined tradesman and his wife and
children, and in the devoted affection of his apprentice. But the true
illumination of the book, and its personal value for the biographer, lie
in the white heat of anger, the "sustained and sleepless irony" to adopt
Mr Austin Dobson's happy phrase, with which Fielding, with a force
unwavering from the first page to the last, here assails his subject. An
underlying attack on the Ministerial iniquity of "Great Men" in high
places seems to be often suggested; if this be a true inference, it does
but give us further proof of Fielding's energies as a political, no less
than as a moral, reformer. Certainly, through all the squalid scenes of
the book, the contention is insisted on that criminals of Wild's
tyrannical stamp may as easily be found in courts, and at the head of
armies, as among the poor leaders of Newgate gangs. To the wise moralist
it is the same rogue, whether picking a pocket or swindling his country.
And not to forget the wit in the moral reformer, we may leave Mr Jonathan
Wild listening to one of the reasons given by the Newgate chaplain for his
Reverence's preference for punch over wine: "Let me tell you, Mr Wild
there is nothing so deceitful as the spirits given us by wine. If you must
drink let us have a bowl of punch; a liquor I the rather prefer as it is
nowhere spoken against in Scripture."
After _Jonathan Wild_ the most interesting fragment of the _Miscellanies_
is the _Journey from this World to the Next_. In this essay Fielding
reveals his philosophy, his sternness, his affections, and his humour, as
a man might do in intimate conversation. His warm humanity breathes in the
conception that "the only Business" of those who had won admission to
Elysium 'that happy Place,' was to "contribute to the Happiness of each
other"; and again in the stern declaration of Heaven's doorkeeper, the
Judge Minos, that "no Man enters that Gate without Charity." And indeed
the whole chapter devoted to the judgments administered by Minos on the
spirits that come, confident or trembling, before him, and are either
admitted to Heaven, sent back to earth, or despatched to the "little Back
Gate" opening immediately into the bottomless pit, is full of personal
revelation. We feel the glee with which Fielding consigns the "little
sneaking soul" of a miser to diabolically ingenious torments; the
satisfaction with which he watches Minos apply a kick to the retreating
figure of a duke, possessed of nothing but "a very solemn Air and great
Dignity"; and the pleasure it gave him to observe the rejection accorded
to "a grave Lady," the Judge declaring that "there was not a single Prude
in Elysium." Again, nothing could be more true to Fielding's nature than
the account of the poet who is admitted, not for the moral value he
himself places on his Dramatic Works (which he endeavours to read aloud to
Minos), but because "he had once lent the whole profits of a Benefit Night
to a Friend, and by that Means had saved him and his Family from
Destruction"; unless it were the account of the poverty driven wretch,
hanged for a robbery of eighteen-pence, who yet could plead that he had
supported an aged Parent with his labour, that he had been a very tender
Husband, and a Kind Father, and that he had ruined himself for being Bail
for a Friend. "At these words," adds the historian, "the gate opened, and
_Minos_ bid him enter, giving him a slap on the Back as he passed by him."
When the author's own turn came, he very little expects, he tells us, "to
pass this fiery Trial. I confess'd I had indulged myself very freely with
Wine and Women in my Youth, but had never done an Injury to any Man
living, nor avoided an opportunity of doing good; but I pretended to very
little Virtue more than general Philanthropy and Private Friendship." Here
Minos cut the speaker short, bidding him enter the gate, and not indulge
himself trumpeting forth his virtues. Whether or no we may here read the
reflections of Fielding's maturity, looking honestly back over his own
forty years and forward with humble fear into the future, we may certainly
see reflected in both confession and judgment much of the doctrine and the
practice of his life.
After the failure, early in 1743, of the _Wedding Day_, and the subsequent
publication of the _Miscellanies_, Fielding seems to have thrown his
energies for twelve months into an exclusive pursuit of the law. This
appears from his statement, made a year later, in May 1744, that he could
not possibly be the author of his sister's novel _David Simple_, which had
been attributed to him, because he had applied himself to his profession
"with so arduous and intent a diligence that I have had no leisure, if I
had inclination, to compose anything of this kind." Clearly, in the period
that covers the publication of _Joseph Andrews_ an historical pamphlet,
parts of a farce and of _Plutus_, and of the _Miscellanies_, Fielding
found both leisure and inclination for writing; so this sudden immersion
in law must relate to the twelve months or so intervening between these
works and the publication of his statement. Murphy corroborates this bout
of hard legal effort. After the _Wedding Day_ says that biographer "the
law from this time had its hot and cold fits with him." The cold fits were
fits of gout; and inconveniences felt by Fielding from these interruptions
were, adds Murphy "the more severe upon him, as voluntary and wilful
neglect could not be charged upon him. The repeated shocks of illness
disabled him from being as assiduous an attendant at the bar, as his own
inclination and patience of the most laborious application, would
otherwise have made him."
Mr Counsellor Fielding follows his retrospect of this strenuous attack on
the law with a declaration that, henceforth, he intends to forsake the
pursuit of that 'foolscap' literary fame, and the company of the
'infamous' nine Muses; a decision based partly on the insubstantial nature
of the rewards achieved, and partly it would seem due to the fact that at
Fielding's innocent door had been laid, he declares, half the anonymous
scurrility, indecency, treason, and blasphemy that the few last years had
produced. [6] In especial he protests against the ascription to his pen of
that 'infamous paltry libel' on lawyers, the _Causidicade_, an ascription
which, as he truly says, accused him "not only of being a bad writer and a
bad man, but with downright idiotism in flying in the face of the greatest
men of my profession." He also declares that no anonymous work had issued
from his pen since his promise to that effect; and that these false
accusations had injured him cruelly in ease, reputation and interest. This
solemn declaration that the now detested Muses shall no longer beguile
Fielding's pen affords excellent reading in view of the fact that this
absorbed barrister must, within a year or two, have been at work on _Tom
Jones_. The whole emphatic outburst was probably partly an effort to
assert himself as now wholly devoted to the law, and partly an example of
one of those "occasional fits of peevishness" into which, Murphy tells us,
distress and disappointment would betray him.
The preface to his sister's novel _David Simple_, in which Fielding took
occasion to announce these protests and assertions, is his only extant
publication for this year of 1744; and apart from its biographical value
is not of any great moment. Ample proof may be found in it of brotherly
pride and admiration for the work of a sister "so nearly and dearly allied
to me in the highest friendship as well as relation." There is the
noteworthy declaration that the "greatest, noblest, and rarest of all the
talents which constitute a genius" is the gift of "a deep and profound
discernment of all the mazes, windings, and labyrinths which perplex the
heart of man." The utterance concerning style, by so great a master of
English, is memorable--"a good style as well as a good hand in writing is
chiefly learned by practice." And a delightful reference should not be
forgotten to the carping ignorant critic, who has indeed, "had a little
Latin inoculated into his tail," but who would have been much the gainer
had "the same great quantity of birch been employed in scourging away his
ill-nature."
Disabled by gout and harassed by want of money, a yet greater distress was
now fast closing on Fielding in the prolonged illness of his wife. "To see
her daily languishing and wearing away before his eyes," says Murphy, "was
too much for a man of his strong sensations; the fortitude with which he
met all other calamities of life [now] deserted him." In the autumn of
1744 Mrs Fielding was at Bath, doubtless in the hope of benefit from the
Bath waters. And here, in November, she died. Her body was brought to
London for burial in the church of St. Martin's in the Fields; receiving
on the 14th of November, 1744, honourable interment in the chancel vault,
to the tolling of the great tenor bell, and with the fullest ceremonial of
the time. Indeed it is evident, from the charges still preserved in the
sexton's book, that Fielding rendered to his wife such stately honours as
were occasionally accorded to the members of the few great families
interred in the old church.
The death of this beloved wife, Murphy tells us, brought on Fielding "such
a vehemence of grief that his friends began to think him in danger of
losing his reason." When we remember that he himself has explicitly stated
that lovely picture of the 'fair soul in the fair body,' the Sophia of
_Tom Jones_, to have been but a portrait of Charlotte Fielding, we can in
some measure realise his overwhelming grief at her death. And that the
exquisite memorial raised to his wife by Fielding's affection and genius
was not more beautiful in mind or face than the original, is acknowledged
by Lady Bute, a kinswoman of the great novelist. Lady Bute was no
stranger, "to that beloved first wife whose picture he drew in his Amelia,
where, as she said, even the glowing language he knew how to employ did
not do more than justice to the amiable qualities of the original, or to
her beauty. He loved her passionately, and she returned his affection; yet
had no happy life for they were almost always miserably poor, and seldom
in a state of quiet and safety. His elastic gaiety of spirit carried him
through it all; but meanwhile, care and anxiety were preying upon her more
delicate mind, and undermining her constitution. She gradually declined,
caught a fever and died in his arms." That Fielding's married life was
unhappy, whatever were its outward conditions, is obviously a very shallow
misstatement; but, for the rest, the picture accords well enough with our
knowledge of his nature. The passionate tenderness of which that nature
was capable appears in a passage from those very _Miscellanies_, which, he
tells us, were written with so frequent a "Degree of Heartache." In the
_Journey from this World to the Next_, Fielding describes how, on his
entrance into Elysium, that "happy region whose beauty no Painting of the
Imagination can describe" and where "Spirits know one another by
Intuition" he presently met "a little Daughter whom I had lost several
years before. Good Gods! What Words can describe the Raptures, the melting
passionate Tenderness, with which we kiss'd each other, continuing in our
Embrace, with the most extatic Joy, a Space, which if Time had been
measured here as on Earth, could not have been less than half a Year."
The fittest final comment on Henry Fielding's marriage with Charlotte
Cradock is, perhaps, that saying of a member of his own craft of the
drama, "Now to love anything sincerely is an act of grace, but to love the
best sincerely is a state of grace."
[1] _Daily Post_, June 5, 1742.
[2] MS. copy of the Minutes of the Meetings of the Partners in the
_Champion_, in the possession of the present writer.
[3] See _Daily Post_. May 29, 1742.
[4] Preface to the _Miscellanies_.
[5] Such as the inscription on some verses, published in the
_Miscellanies_, as "Written _Extempore_ in the Pump-room" at Bath, in
1742.
[6] Preface to _David Simple_.