AMELIA
"of all my Offspring she is my favourite Child."
The _Covent Garden Journal_. No. 8.
On the 2nd of December 1751 the _General Advertiser_ announces that
_On Wednesday the 18th of this Month will be published_
IN FOUR VOLUMES DUODECIMO
AMELIA
By HENRY FIELDING, Esq;
_Beati ter et amplius
Quos irrupta tenet Copula_. HOR.
And the puff preliminary of the period may be read in the same columns,
declaring that the "earnest Demand of the Publick" had necessitated the
use of four printing presses; and that it being impossible to complete the
binding in time, copies would be available "sew'd at Half-a-Guinea a
Sett." Sir Walter Scott tells us that, at a sale to booksellers before
publication, Andrew Millar, the publisher, refused to part with _Amelia_
on the usual discount terms; and that the booksellers, being thus
persuaded of a great future for the book, eagerly bought up the
impression. Launched thus, and heralded by the popularity with which _Tom
Jones_ had now endowed Fielding's name, the entire edition was sold out on
the day of publication; an event which evoked the observation from Dr
Johnson that _Amelia_ was perhaps the only book which being printed off
betimes one morning, a new edition was called for before night. The Doctor
gave not only unstinted praise, but also an involuntary tribute to
_Amelia_. He read the book through, without pausing, from beginning to
end. And he pronounced Amelia herself to be "the most pleasing heroine of
all the romances." [1]
But to the majority of readers Amelia is, assuredly, something more than
the most charming of heroines. She is the delightful companion; the wise
and tender friend; a woman whose least perfection was that dazzling beauty
which shone with equal lustre in the 'poor rags' lent her by her old
nurse, or in her own clothing, just as the happy purity of her nature only
glows more brightly for the dark scenes through which she moves. In the
whole range of English literature there is surely no figure more warmly
human, and yet less touched with human imperfection; none more simply and
naturally alive, and yet truer in every crisis (and there were few of the
sorrowful things of life unknown to her) to the best qualities of generous
womanhood. And if it is largely for her glowing vitality that we love
Amelia, we love her none the less in that she is no fool. It was hardly
necessary to tell us, as Fielding is careful to do, that her sense of
humour was keen, and that her insight into the ridiculous was tempered
only by the deeper insight of her heart. Her understanding of her husband
is as perfect as her love for him; and that love is far too profound to
allow a moment's suggestion of mere placid amiability. Amelia, whether
quizzing the absurdities of the affected fine ladies of her own rank, or
cooking her husband's supper in the poor lodgings of their poverty;
whether so radiant with happiness after seeing her little children
handsomely entertained that with flushed cheeks and bright eyes, "she was
all a blaze of beauty," or, pale with distress, bravely carrying her own
clothes and the children's trinkets to the pawnbroker; whether betraying
her own noble qualities of silence and forgiveness, or losing her temper
with Mrs Bennett,--commands equal affection and admiration. "They say,"
wrote Thackeray, "that it was in his own home that Fielding knew her and
loved her: and from his own wife that he drew the most charming character
in English fiction--Fiction? Why fiction! Why not history? I know Amelia
just as well as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu."
Lady Mary, and her daughter Lady Bute, have left very definite statements
concerning this portrait which their cousin was alleged to have hidden
under the fair image of Amelia. Lady Bute we are told 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...." [2] And Lady Mary
herself writes, "H. Fielding has given a true picture of himself and his
first wife, in the characters of Mr and Mrs Booth [Amelia and her
husband], some compliments to his own figure excepted; and I am persuaded
several of the incidents he mentions are real matters of fact." [3]
Against these persuations we must place the fact that this book contains
no such explicit statement as that which in _Tom Jones_ assures us of the
original of the beautiful Sophia. But we shall not love Amelia the less if
we see her, with her courage and her beauty, her happy gaiety of spirit,
her tenderness and strength, solacing the distresses and calming the
storms of Fielding's restless genius, rather than devoting those qualities
to assuaging the misfortunes of Captain William Booth. For indeed Captain
Booth has but one substantial title to our regard, and that is his
adoration for his wife. True, he is a pretty figure of a man; he has a
handsome face; he fights bravely, and would kick a rogue through the
world; he believes in and loves his friends; and he plays charmingly with
his children. But, deprive him of the good genius of his life, and Captain
Booth would very speedily have sunk into the ruin and despair of any other
profligate young gamester about the Town; and for this his adoration the
culprit wins our forgiveness, even as Amelia not only forgave but forgot,
when by virtue of her own unconscious goodness the Captain retrieved
himself, at last, from the folly of his ways. Undoubtedly the man whom
Amelia loved, and who had the grace to return that passion, was no
scoundrel at heart.
It is impossible, now, to discover with any certainty the incidents which
Lady Mary was persuaded were matters of fact. The experiences of Captain
Booth, when essaying to turn gentleman farmer, have been quoted as copies
of Fielding's own ambitions at East Stour; but surely on very slender
evidence. Much more personal seem many of the later scenes in the poor
London lodgings, scenes of cruel distress and perfect happiness, of bitter
disappointments and sanguine hope. Here, very probably, we have echoes of
the struggles of Harry and Charlotte Fielding, in the days of hackney
writing and of baffled efforts at the Bar; just as the dry statement by
Arthur Murphy, that Fielding was "remarkable for ... the strongest
affection for his children," comes to life in the many touching pictures
of Amelia and Booth with their little son and daughter. The pursuit of
such identity of incident may the more cheerfully be left to the
anecdotist, in that the biographical value of _Amelia_, is far more than
incidental. For the book is, as has been said, a one-part piece. Round the
single figure of Amelia all the other characters revolve; and it was of
Amelia that Fielding himself has told us, in words that are a master key
to his own character "of all my offspring she is my favourite Child." As
surely as a man may be known by his choice in a friend, so is the nature
of the artist betrayed when he avows his partiality for one alone among
all the creations of his genius.
As to the remaining figures in this "model of human life," to quote
Fielding's own descriptive phrase of his book, those which tell us most of
their author are that worthy, authoritative, humourous clergyman, Dr
Harrison; the good Sergeant Atkinson; and that fiery pedant Colonel Bath,
with his kind heart hidden under a ferocious passion for calling out every
man whom he conceived to have slighted his honour. Dr Harrison does not
win quite the same place in our hearts as the man whom Thackeray calls
'dear Parson Adams'; his cassock rustles a little too loudly; the saint is
a trifle obscured in the Doctor. But yet we love him for his warm and
protecting affection for his 'children' as he calls Amelia and Booth; for
his dry humour; and for that generosity which was for ever draining his
ample purse. And perhaps we like him none the less for his scholar's
raillery of that early blue-stocking Mrs Bennet; while his dignity never
shows to greater advantage than when he throws himself bodily on the
villain Murphy, achieving the arrest of that felon by the strength of his
own arm, and the nimbleness of his own legs. And to this good Doctor is
given a saying eminently characteristic of Justice Fielding himself. We
are told that "it was a maxim of his that no man could descend below
himself in doing any act which may contribute to protect an innocent
person, or to bring a rogue to the gallows." Another trait of the Doctor
recalls Fielding's oft reiterated aversion to what he calls grave formal
persons: "You must know then, child," said he, to poor Booth, sunk in the
melancholy problem of supporting a wife and three children on something
less than £40 a year, "that I have been thinking on this subject as well
as you; for I can think, I promise you, with a pleasant countenance." Of
Amelia's foster-brother Sergeant Atkinson (from whom Major William Dobbin
is directly descended) it is enough to say that the noble qualities
concealed beneath the common cloth of his sergeant's coat perfectly
confirm a sentence written many years before by the hand of his author. "I
will venture to affirm," Fielding declares, in his early essay on the
_Characters of Men_, "that I have known ... _a Fellow whom no man should
be seen to speak to_, capable of the highest acts of Friendship and
Benevolence."
Fielding's energies in this his last novel, a novel be it remembered
written in the midst of daily contact with the squalid vices exhibited in
an eighteenth century court-room, seem to have been almost wholly absorbed
in creating the most perfect escape from those surroundings in the person
of Amelia. Beside the figure of his 'favourite child,' the vicious
criminals of his stage, the malefic My Lord, the loathsome Trent, the
debased Justice, the terrible human wrecks in Newgate, are but dark
figures in a shadowy back-ground. Still, the great moralist shows no lack
of vigour in his delineations of such offspring of vice. The genius that
knew how to rouse every reader of _Tom Jones_ to 'lend a foot to kick
Blifil downstairs,' awards in the last pages of _Amelia_, a yet more
satisfying justice to that nameless connoisseur in profligacy, My Lord.
In his Dedication to Ralph Allen, Fielding states that his book "is
sincerely designed to promote the Cause of Virtue, and to expose some of
the most glaring Evils, as well public as private, which at present infest
this Country". The statement seems somewhat needless when prefacing pages
which enshrine Amelia; and where also are displayed Blear Eyed Moll in the
prison yard of Newgate, as Newgate was twenty years before the prison
reforms of Howard were heard of; Justice Thrasher and his iniquities; the
'diabolisms' of My Lord and of his tool Trent; the ruinous miseries of
excessive gambling; and the abuses of duelling. Indeed the avowedly
didactic purpose of the moralist seems at times to cloud a little the fine
perception of the artist. There are passages, in this book which, much as
they redound to the honour of their writer, are indisputably heavy
reading. But what shall not be forgiven to the creator of Amelia. "To have
invented that character," cries Thackeray, also becoming didactic, "is not
only a triumph of art, but it is a good action." And he tells us how with
all his heart he loves and admires the 'kindest and sweetest lady in the
world'; and how he thinks of her as faithfully as though he had
breakfasted with her that morning in her drawing-room, or should meet her
that afternoon in the Park.
It is recorded that Fielding received from Andrew Millar £1000 for the
copyright of _Amelia_. But the reception of the new novel, after the first
rush for copies, seems to have done little credit either to the brains or
to the heart of the public. And in the month following _Amelia's_
appearance, Fielding satirises the comments of the Town, in two numbers of
his _Covent Garden Journal_; protesting that though he does not think his
child to be entirely free from faults--"I know nothing human that is
so,"--still "surely she does not deserve the Rancour with which she hath
been treated by the Public." As ironic specimens of the faults complained
of in his heroine, he quotes the accusations that her not abusing her
husband "for having lost Money at Play, when she saw his Heart was already
almost broke by it, was _contemptible Meanness_"; that she condescends to
dress her husband's supper, and to dress her children, to whom moreover
she shows too much kindness; that she once mentions the DEVIL; that she is
a _low_ character; and that the beauty of her face is hopelessly flawed by
a carriage accident. Such are some of the charges brought against the
lovely Amelia by the "Beaus, Rakes, fine Ladies, and several formal
Persons with bushy wigs and canes at their Noses," who, in Fielding's
satire, crowd the Court where his book is placed on trial for the crime of
dullness. Then Fielding himself steps forward, and after pleading for this
his 'favourite Child,' on whom he has bestowed "a more than ordinary Pains
in her Education," he declares, with the same hasty petulance that
characterised that previous outburst in the preface to _David Simple_,
that indeed he "will trouble the World no more with any children of mine
by the same Muse." Two months later the _Gentleman's Magazine_ prints a
spirited appeal against this resolution. "His fair heroine's nose has in
my opinion been too severely handled by some modern critics," [4] writes
Criticulus, after a passage of warm praise for the characterisation, the
morality, and the 'noble reflections of the book'; and he proceeds to
point out that the writings of such critics "will never make a sufficient
recompense to the world, if _Mr Fielding_ adheres to what I hope he only
said in his warmth and indignation of this injurious treatment, that he
will never trouble the public with any more writings of this kind." The
words of the enlightened _Criticulus_ echo sadly when we remember that in
little more than two years the great genius and the great heart of Henry
Fielding were to be silenced.
The _London Magazine_ for 1751 devotes the first nine columns of its
December number to a resume of the novel, and continues this compliment in
another nine columns of appendix. With a fine patronage the reviewer
concludes that "upon the whole, the story is amusing, the characters kept
up, and many reflections which [sic] are useful, if the reader will but
take notice of them, which in this unthinking age it is to be feared very
few will." Some imperfections he kindly excuses on the score of "the
author's hurry of business in administering impartial justice to his
majesty's good people"; but he cannot excuse what he declares to be the
ridicule of _Liberty_ in Book viii.; and he solemnly exhorts the author
that as "he has in this piece very justly exposed some of the private
vices and follies of the present age" so he should in his next direct his
satire against political corruption, otherwise 'he and his patrons' will
be accused of compounding the same. [5] It seems incredible that any
suggestion should ever have attached to the author of _Pasquin_ and the
_Register_, as to one who could condone public corruption. And as for the
accusation of tampering with "Liberty" the like charge was brought, we may
remember, by the "Happy Cobler of Portugal Street" against Fielding's
_Inquiry into the Encrease of Robbers_. The literary cobblers who pursued
_Amelia_ with the abuse of their poor pens may very well be consigned to
the oblivion of their political brother. The comment of one hostile pen
cannot however be dismissed as coming from a literary cobbler, and that is
the 'sickening' abuse, to use Thackeray's epithet, which Richardson
dishonoured himself in flinging at his great contemporary. That abuse the
sentimentalist poured out very freely on _Amelia_; but, as Mr Austin
Dobson says, "in cases of this kind _parva seges satis est_, and Amelia
has long since outlived both rival malice and contemporary coldness. It is
a proof of her author's genius that she is even more intelligible to our
age than she was to her own." [6]
In Fielding's satiric description of the Court before which his Amelia
stood her trial, he describes himself as an 'old gentleman.' The adjective
seems hardly applicable to a man of forty five; but, to quote again from
Mr Austin Dobson, "however it may have chanced, whether from failing
health or otherwise, the Fielding of _Amelia_ is suddenly a far older man
than the Fielding of _Tom Jones_. The robust and irrepressible vitality,
the full veined delight of living, the energy of observation and strength
of satire, which characterise the one, give place in the other to a calmer
retrospection, a more compassionate humanity, a more benignant criticism
of life." Murphy's Irish tongue declares a similar feeling in his
comparison of the pages of this, the last of the three great novels, to
the calm of the setting sun; a sun that had first broken forth in the
'morning glory' of _Joseph Andrews_, and had attained its 'highest warmth
and splendour' in the inimitable pages of _Tom Jones_. There is indeed a
mature wisdom and patience in Amelia such as none but a pedant could
demand of her enchanting younger sister Sophia. In these later pages
Sophia has grown up into a gracious womanhood, while losing none of her
girlhood's gaiety and charm. That Amelia, his older and wiser though
scarce sadder child, was the nearest, as he himself tells us, to
Fielding's own heart, is one more indication that here is the perfected
image of that beloved wife, from whose youthful grace and beauty his
genius had already modelled one exquisite memorial.
[1] _Anecdotes_. Mrs Piozzi. p. 221.
[2] Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Introductory
Anecdotes, p. cxxiii.
[3] Ibid. Vol. ii. p. 289.
[4] It is curious that to this unlucky incident, based according to Lady
Louisa Stuart, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's grand-daughter, on a real
accident to Mrs Fielding, Dr Johnson attributed the failure of the book
with the public: "that vile broken nose ruined the sale," he declared.
Early in January Fielding himself protests in his _Covent Garden Journal_
that every reader of any intelligence would have discovered that the
effects of Amelia's terrible carriage accident had been wholly remedied by
"a famous Surgeon"; and that "the Author of her History, in a hurry,
forgot to inform his Readers of that Particular." The particular has by
now fallen into its due insignificance, and, save for Johnson's
explanation therein of the poor sale of the book, is scarce worth
recalling.
[5] _London Magazine_. December 1751. p. 531 and Appendix.
[6] _Fielding_. Austin Dobson. p. 161.