JUSTICE LIFE--AMELIA.
In one of Horace Walpole's letters to George Montagu, already quoted,
there is a description of Fielding's Bow Street establishment, which has
attracted more attention than it deserves. The letter is dated May the
18th, 1749, and the passage (in Cunningham's edition) runs as follows:--
"He [Rigby] and Peter Bathurst [Footnote: Probably a son of Peter
Bathurst (d. 1748), brother of Pope's friend, Allen, Lord Bathurst.
Rigby was the Richard Rigby whose despicable character is familiar in
Eighteenth-Century Memoirs. "He died (says Cunningham) involved in debt,
with his accounts as Paymaster of the Forces hopelessly unsettled."]
t'other night carried a servant of the latter's, who had attempted to
shoot him, before Fielding; who, to all his other vocations, has, by the
grace of Mr. Lyttelton, added that of Middlesex justice. He sent them
word he was at supper, that they must come next morning. They did not
understand that freedom, and ran up, where they found him banqueting
with a blind man, a whore, and three Irishmen, on some cold mutton and a
bone of ham, both in one dish, and the dirtiest cloth. He never stirred
nor asked them to sit. Rigby, who had seen him so often come to beg a
guinea of Sir C. Williams, and Bathurst, at whose father's he had lived
for victuals, understood that dignity as little, and pulled themselves
chairs; on which he civilised."
Scott calls this "a humiliating anecdote;" and both Mr. Lawrence and Mr.
Keightley have exhausted rhetoric in the effort to explain it away. As
told, it is certainly uncomplimentary; but considerable deductions must
be made, both for the attitude of the narrator and the occasion of the
narrative. Walpole's championship of his friends was notorious; and his
absolute injustice, when his partisan spirit was uppermost, is
everywhere patent to the readers of his Letters. In the present case he
was not of the encroaching party; and he speaks from hearsay solely. But
his friends had, in his opinion, been outraged by a man, who, according
to his ideas of fitness, should have come to them cap in hand; and as a
natural consequence, the story, no doubt exaggerated when it reached
him, loses nothing under his transforming and malicious pen. Stripped of
its decorative flippancy, however, there remains but little that can
really be regarded as "humiliating." Scott himself suggests, what is
most unquestionably the case, that the blind man was the novelist's
half-brother, afterwards Sir John Fielding; and it is extremely unlikely
that the lady so discourteously characterised could have been any other
than his wife, who, Lady Stuart tells us, "had few personal charms."
There remain the "three Irishmen," who may, or may not, have been
perfectly presentable members of society. At all events, their mere
nationality, so rapidly decided upon, cannot be regarded as a stigma.
That the company and entertainment were scarcely calculated to suit the
superfine standard of Mr. Bathurst and Mr. Rigby may perhaps be
conceded. Fielding was by no means a rich man, and in his chequered
career had possibly grown indifferent to minor decencies. Moreover, we
are told by Murphy that, as a Westminster justice, he "kept his table
open to those who had been his friends when young, and had impaired
their own fortunes." Thus, it must always have been a more or less
ragged regiment who met about that kindly Bow Street board; but that the
fact reflects upon either the host or guests cannot be admitted for a
moment. If the anecdote is discreditable to anyone it is to that facile
retailer of _ana_, and incorrigible society-gossip, Mr. Horace Walpole.
But while these unflattering tales were told of his private life,
Fielding was fast becoming eminent in his public capacity. On the 12th
of May 1749 he was unanimously chosen chairman of Quarter Sessions at
Hicks's Hall (as the Clerkenwell Sessions House was then called); and on
the 29th of June following he delivered a charge to the Westminster
Grand Jury which is usually printed with his works, and which is still
regarded by lawyers as a model exposition. It is at first a little
unexpected to read his impressive and earnest denunciations of
masquerades and theatres (in which latter, by the way, one Samuel Foote
had very recently been following the example of the author of
_Pasquin_); but Fielding the magistrate and Fielding the playwright were
two different persons; and a long interval of changeful experience lay
between them. In another part of his charge, which deals with the
offence of libelling, it is possible that his very vigorous appeal was
not the less forcible by reason of the personal attacks to which he had
referred in the Preface to _David Simple_, the _Jacobite's Journal_, and
elsewhere. His only other literary efforts during this year appear to
have been a little pamphlet entitled _A True State of the Case of
Bosavern Penlez_; and a formal congratulatory letter to Lyttelton upon
his second marriage, in which, while speaking gratefully of his own
obligations to his friend, he endeavours to enlist his sympathies for
Moore the fabulist who was also "about to marry." The pamphlet had
reference to an occurrence which took place in July. Three sailors of
the "Grafton" man-of-war had been robbed in a house of ill fame in the
Strand. Failing to obtain redress, they attacked the house with their
comrades, and wrecked it, causing a "dangerous riot," to which Fielding
makes incidental reference in one of his letters to the Duke of Bedford,
and which was witnessed by John Byrom, the poet and stenographer, in
whose _Remains_ it is described. Bosavern Penlez or Pen Lez, who had
joined the crowd, and in whose possession some of the stolen property
was found, was tried and hanged in September. His sentence, which was
considered extremely severe, excited much controversy, and the object of
Fielding's pamphlet was to vindicate the justice and necessity of his
conviction.
Towards the close of 1749 Fielding fell seriously ill with fever
aggravated by gout. It was indeed at one time reported that
mortification had supervened; but under the care of Dr. Thomson, that
dubious practitioner whose treatment of Winnington in 1746 had given
rise to so much paper war, he recovered; and during 1750 was actively
employed in his magisterial duties. At this period lawlessness and
violence appear to have prevailed to an unusual extent in the
metropolis, and the office of a Bow Street justice was no sinecure.
Reform of some kind was felt on all sides to be urgently required; and
Fielding threw his two years' experience and his deductions therefrom
into the form of a pamphlet entitled _An Enquiry into the Causes of the
late Increase of Robbers, etc., with some Proposals for remedying this
growing Evil_. It was dedicated to the then Lord High Chancellor, Philip
Yorke, Lord Hardwicke, by whom, as well as by more recent legal
authorities, it was highly appreciated. Like the _Charge to the Grand
Jury_, it is a grave argumentative document, dealing seriously with
luxury, drunkenness, gaming, and other prevalent vices. Once only, in an
ironical passage respecting beaus and fine ladies, does the author
remind us of the author of _Tom Jones_. As a rule, he is weighty,
practical, and learned in the law. Against the curse of Gin-drinking,
which, owing to the facilities for obtaining that liquor, had increased
to an alarming extent among the poorer classes, he is especially urgent
and energetic. He points out that it is not only making dreadful havoc
in the present, but that it is enfeebling the race of the future, and he
concludes--
"Some little Care on this Head is surely necessary: For tho' the
Encrease of Thieves, and the Destruction of Morality; though the Loss of
our Labourers, our Sailors, and our Soldiers, should not be sufficient
Reasons, there is one which seems to be unanswerable, and that is, the
Loss of our Gin-drinkers: Since, should the drinking this Poison be
continued in its present Height during the next twenty Years, there
will, by that Time, be very few of the common People left to drink it."
To the appeal thus made by Fielding in January 1751, Hogarth added his
pictorial protest in the following month by his awful plate of _Gin
Lane_, which, if not actually prompted by his friend's words, was
certainly inspired by the same crying evil. One good result of these
efforts was the "Bill for restricting the Sale of Spirituous Liquors,"
to which the royal assent was given in June, and Fielding's connection
with this enactment is practically acknowledged by Horace Walpole in his
_Memoires of the Last ten Years of the Reign of George II_. The law was
not wholly effectual, and was difficult to enforce; but it was not by
any means without its good effects. [Footnote: The Rev. R. Hurd,
afterwards Bishop of Worcester, an upright and scholarly, but formal and
censorious man, whom Johnson called a "word-picker," and franker
contemporaries "an old maid in breeches," has left a reference to
Fielding at this time which is not flattering. "I dined with him [Ralph
Allen] yesterday, where I met Mr. Fielding,--a poor emaciated, worn-out
rake, whose gout and infirmities have got the better even of his
buffoonery" (Letter to Balguy, dated "Inner Temple, 19th March, 1751.")
That Fielding had not long before been dangerously ill, and that he was
a martyr to gout, is fact: the rest is probably no more than the echo of
a foregone conclusion, based upon report, or dislike to his works. Hurd
praised Richardson and proscribed Sterne. He must have been wholly out
of sympathy with the author of _Tom Jones_.]
Between the publication of the _Enquiry_ and that of _Amelia_ there is
nothing of importance to chronicle except Fielding's connection with one
of the events of 1751, the discovery of the Glastonbury waters.
According to the account given in the _Gentleman's_ for July in that
year, a certain Matthew Chancellor had been cured of "an asthma and
phthisic" of thirty years' standing by drinking from a spring near Chain
Gate, Glastonbury, to which he had (so he alleged) been directed in a
dream. The spring forthwith became famous; and in May an entry in the
Historical Chronicle for Sunday, the 5th, records that above 10,000
persons had visited it, deserting Bristol, Bath, and other popular
resorts. Numerous pamphlets were published for and against the new
waters; and a letter in their favour, which appeared in the _London
Daily Advertiser_ for the 31st August, signed "Z. Z.," is "supposed to
be wrote" by "J--e F--g." Fielding was, as may be remembered, a
Somersetshire man, Sharpham Park, his birthplace, being about three
miles from Glastonbury; and he testifies to the "wonderful Effects of
this salubrious Spring" in words which show that he had himself
experienced them. "Having seen great Numbers of my Fellow Creatures
under two of the most miserable Diseases human Nature can labour under,
the Asthma and Evil, return from _Glastonbury_ blessed with the Return
of Health, and having myself been relieved from a Disorder which baffled
the most skilful Physicians," justice to mankind (he says) obliges him
to take notice of the subject. The letter is interesting, more as
showing that, at this time, Fielding's health was broken, than as
proving the efficacy of the cure; for, whatever temporary relief the
waters afforded, it is clear (as Mr. Lawrence pertinently remarks) that
he derived no permanent benefit from them. They must, however, have
continued to attract visitors, as a pump-room was opened in August 1753;
and, although they have now fallen into disuse, they were popular for
many years.
But a more important occurrence than the discovery of the Somersetshire
spring is a little announcement contained in Sylvanus Urban's list of
publications for December 1751, No. 17 of which is "_Amelia_, in 4
books, 12mo; by Henry Fielding, Esq." The publisher, of course, was
Andrew Millar; and the actual day of issue, as appears from the _General
Advertiser_, was December the 19th, although the title-page, by
anticipation, bore the date of 1752. There were two mottoes, one of
which was the appropriate--
"_Felices ter & amplius
Quos irrupta tenet Copula;_"
and the dedication, brief and simply expressed, was to Ralph Allen. As
before, the "artful aid" of advertisement was invoked to whet the public
appetite.
"To satisfy the earnest Demand of the Publick (says Millar), this Work
has been printed at four Presses; but the Proprietor notwithstanding
finds it impossible to get them (_sic_) bound in Time, without spoiling
the Beauty of the Impression, and therefore will sell them sew'd at
Half-a-Guinea."
This was open enough; but, according to Scott, Millar adopted a second
expedient to assist _Amelia_ with the booksellers.
"He had paid a thousand pounds for the copyright; and when he began to
suspect that the work would be judged inferior to its predecessor, he
employed the following stratagem to push it upon the trade. At a sale
made to the booksellers, previous to the publication, Millar offered his
friends his other publications on the usual terms of discount; but when
he came to _Amelia_, he laid it aside, as a work expected to be in such
demand, that he could not afford to deliver it to the trade in the usual
manner. The _ruse_ succeeded--the impression was anxiously bought up,
and the bookseller relieved from every apprehension of a slow sale."
There were several reasons why--superficially speaking--_Amelia_ should
be "judged inferior to its predecessor." That it succeeded _Tom Jones_
after an interval of little more than two years and eight months would
be an important element in the comparison, if it were known at all
definitely what period was occupied in writing _Tom Jones_. All that can
be affirmed is that Fielding must have been far more at leisure when he
composed the earlier work than he could possibly have been when filling
the office of a Bow Street magistrate. But, in reality, there is a much
better explanation of the superiority of _Tom Jones_ to _Amelia_ than
the merely empirical one of the time it took. _Tom Jones_, it has been
admirably said by a French critic, "_est la condensation et le resume de
toute une existence. C'est le resultat et la conclusion de plusieurs
annees de passions et de pensees, la formule derniere et complete de la
philosophie personnelle que l'on s'est faite sur tout ce que l'on a vu
et senti_." Such an experiment, argues Planche, is not twice repeated in
a lifetime: the soil which produced so rich a crop can but yield a
poorer aftermath. Behind _Tom Jones_ there was the author's ebullient
youth and manhood; behind _Amelia_ but a section of his graver middle-
age. There are other reasons for diversity in the manner of the book
itself. The absence of the initial chapters, which gave so much variety
to _Tom Jones_, tends to heighten the sense of impatience which, it must
be confessed, occasionally creeps over the reader of _Amelia_,
especially in those parts where, like Dickens at a later period,
Fielding delays the progress of his narrative for the discussion of
social problems and popular grievances. However laudable the desire
(expressed in the dedication) "to expose some of the most glaring Evils,
as well public as private, which at present infest this Country," the
result in _Amelia_, from an art point of view, is as unsatisfactory as
that of certain well-known pages of _Bleak House_ and _Little Dorrit_.
Again, there is a marked change in the attitude of the author,--a change
not wholly reconcilable with the brief period which separates the two
novels. 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 gentler and more
benignant criticism of life. That, as some have contended, _Amelia_
shows an intellectual falling-off cannot for a moment be admitted, least
of all upon the ground--as even so staunch an admirer as Mr. Keightley
has allowed himself to believe--that certain of its incidents are
obviously repeated from the _Modern Husband_ and others of the author's
plays. At this rate _Tom Jones_ might be judged inferior to _Joseph
Andrews_, because the Political Apothecary in the "Man of the Hill's"
story has his prototype in the _Coffee-House Politician_, whose original
is Addison's Upholsterer. The plain fact is, that Fielding recognised
the failure of his plays as literature; he regarded them as dead; and
freely transplanted what was good of his forgotten work into the work
which he hoped would live. In this, it may be, there was something of
indolence or haste; but assuredly there was no proof of declining
powers.
If, for the sake of comparison, _Tom Jones_ may be described as an
animated and happily-constructed comedy, with more than the usual
allowance of first-rate characters, _Amelia_ must be regarded as a one-
part piece, in which the rest of the _dramatis personae_ are wholly
subordinate to the central figure. Captain Booth, the two Colonels,
Atkinson and his wife, Miss Matthews, Dr. Harrison, Trent, the shadowy
and maleficent "My Lord," are all less active on their own account than
energised and set in motion by Amelia. Round her they revolve; from her
they obtain their impulse and their orbit. The best of the men, as
studies, are Dr. Harrison and Colonel Bath. The former, who is as
benevolent as Allworthy, is far more human, and it may be added, more
humorous in well-doing. He is an individual rather than an abstraction.
Bath, with his dignity and gun-cotton honour, is also admirable, but not
entirely free from the objection made to some of Dickens's creations,
that they are rather characteristics than characters. Captain William
Booth, beyond his truth to nature, manifests no qualities that can
compensate for his weakness, and the best that can be said of him is,
that without it, his wife would have had no opportunity for the display
of her magnanimity. There is also a certain want of consistency in his
presentment; and when, in the residence of Mr. Bondum the bailiff, he
suddenly develops an unexpected scholarship, it is impossible not to
suspect that Fielding was unwilling to lose the opportunity of
preserving some neglected scenes of the _Author's Farce_. Miss Matthews
is a new and remarkable study of the _femme entretenue_, to parallel
which, as in the case of Lady Bellaston, we must go to Balzac; Mrs.
James, again, is an excellent example of that vapid and colourless
nonentity, the "person of condition." Mrs. Bennet, although apparently
more contradictory and less intelligible, is nevertheless true to her
past history and present environments; while her husband, the sergeant,
with his concealed and reverential love for his beautiful foster-sister,
has had a long line of descendants in the modern novel. It is upon
Amelia, however, that the author has lavished all his pains, and there
is no more touching portrait in the whole of fiction than this heroic
and immortal one of feminine goodness and forbearance. It is needless to
repeat that it is painted from Fielding's first wife, or to insist that,
as Lady Mary was fully persuaded, "several of the incidents he mentions
are real matters of fact." That famous scene where Amelia is spreading,
for the recreant who is losing his money at the King's Arms, the
historic little supper of hashed mutton which she has cooked with her
own hands, and denying herself a glass of white wine to save the paltry
sum of sixpence, "while her Husband was paying a Debt of several Guineas
incurred by the Ace of Trumps being in the Hands of his Adversary"--a
scene which it is impossible to read aloud without a certain huskiness
in the throat,--the visits to the pawnbroker and the sponging-house,
the robbery by the little servant, the encounter at Vauxhall, and some
of the pretty vignettes of the children, are no doubt founded on
personal recollections. Whether the pursuit to which the heroine is
exposed had any foundation in reality it is impossible to say; and there
is a passage in Murphy's memoir which almost reads as if it had been
penned with the express purpose of anticipating any too harshly literal
identification of Booth with Fielding, since we are told of the latter
that "though disposed to gallantry by his strong animal spirits, and the
vivacity of his passions, he was remarkable for tenderness _and
constancy to his wife_ [the italics are ours], and the strongest
affection for his children." These, however, are questions beside the
matter, which is the conception of _Amelia_. That remains, and must
remain for ever, in the words of one of Fielding's greatest modern
successors, a figure
"wrought with love....
Nought modish in it, pure and noble lines
Of generous womanhood that fits all time."
There are many women who forgive; but Amelia does more--she not only
forgives, but she forgets. The passage in which she exhibits to her
contrite husband the letter received long before from Miss Matthews is
one of the noblest in literature; and if it had been recorded that
Fielding--like Thackeray on a memorable occasion--had here slapped his
fist upon the table, and said "_That_ is a stroke of genius!" it would
scarcely have been a thing to be marvelled at. One final point in
connection with her may be noted, which has not always been borne in
mind by those who depict good women--much after Hogarth's fashion--
without a head. She is not by any means a simpleton, and it is
misleading to describe her as a tender, fluttering little creature, who,
because she can cook her husband's supper, and caresses him with the
obsolete name of Billy, must necessarily be contemptible. On the
contrary, she has plenty of ability and good sense, with a fund of
humour which enables her to enjoy slily and even gently satirise the
fine lady airs of Mrs. James. Nor is it necessary to contend that her
faculties are subordinated to her affections; but rather that conjugal
fidelity and Christian charity are inseparable alike from her character
and her creed.
As illustrating the tradition that Fielding depicted his first wife in
Sophia Western and in Amelia, it has been remarked that there is no
formal description of her personal appearance in his last novel, her
portrait having already been drawn at length in _Tom Jones_. But the
following depreciatory sketch by Mrs. James is worth quoting, not only
because it indirectly conveys the impression of a very handsome woman,
but because it is also an admirable specimen of Fielding's lighter
manner:--
"'In the first place,' cries Mrs. James, 'her eyes are too large; and
she hath a look with them that I don't know how to describe; but I know
I don't like it. Then her eyebrows are too large; therefore, indeed, she
doth all in her power to remedy this with her pincers; for if it was not
for those, her eyebrows would be preposterous.--Then her nose, as well
proportioned as it is, has a visible scar on one side. [Footnote: See
note on this subject in chapter iv., and Appendix No. III.]--Her neck
likewise is too protuberant for the genteel size, especially as she
laces herself; for no woman, in my opinion, can be genteel who is not
entirely flat before. And lastly, she is both too short, and too tall.--
Well, you may laugh, Mr. James, I know what I mean, though I cannot well
express it. I mean, that she is too tall for a pretty woman, and too
short for a fine woman.--There is such a thing as a kind of insipid
medium--a kind of something that is neither one thing or another. I know
not how to express it more clearly; but when I say such a one is a
pretty woman, a pretty thing, a pretty creature, you know very well I
mean a little woman; and when I say such a one is a very fine woman, a
very fine person of a woman, to be sure I must mean a tall woman. Now a
woman that is between both, is certainly neither the one nor the other."
The ingenious expedients of Andrew Millar, to which reference has been
made, appear to have so far succeeded that a new edition of _Amelia_ was
called for on the day of publication. Johnson, to whom we owe this
story, was thoroughly captivated with the book. Notwithstanding that on
another occasion he paradoxically asserted that the author was "a
blockhead"--"a barren rascal," he read it through without stopping, and
pronounced Mrs. Booth to be "the most pleasing heroine of all the
romances." Richardson, on the other hand, found "the characters and
situations so wretchedly low and dirty" that he could not get farther
than the first volume. With the professional reviewers, a certain
Criticulus in the _Gentleman's_ excepted, it seems to have fared but
ill; and although these adverse verdicts, if they exist, are now more or
less inaccessible, Fielding has apparently summarised most of them in a
mock-trial of _Amelia_ before the "_Court of_ Censorial Enquiry," the
proceedings of which are recorded in Nos. 7 and 8 of the _Covent-Garden
Journal_. The book is indicted upon the Statute of Dulness, and the
heroine is charged with being a "_low_ Character," a "_Milksop_," and a
"_Fool_;" with lack of spirit and fainting too frequently; with dressing
her children, cooking and other "servile Offices;" with being too
forgiving to her husband; and lastly, as may be expected, with the
inconsistency, already amply referred to, of being "a Beauty _without a
nose_." Dr. Harrison and Colonel Bath are arraigned much in the same
fashion. After some evidence against her has been tendered, and "a Great
Number of Beaus, Rakes, fine Ladies, and several formal Persons with
bushy Wigs, and Canes at their Noses," are preparing to supplement it, a
grave man steps forward, and, begging to be heard, delivers what must be
regarded as Fielding's final apology for his last novel:--
"If you, Mr. Censor, are yourself a Parent, you will view me with
Compassion when I declare I am the Father of this poor Girl the Prisoner
at the Bar; nay, when I go further and avow, that of all my Offspring
she is my favourite Child. I can truly say that I bestowed a more than
ordinary Pains in her Education; in which I will venture to affirm, I
followed the Rules of all those who are acknowledged to have writ best
on the Subject; and if her Conduct be fairly examined, she will be found
to deviate very little from the strictest Observation of all those
Rules; neither Homer nor Virgil pursued them with greater Care than
myself, and the candid and learned Reader will see that the latter was
the noble model, which I made use of on this Occasion.
"I do not think my Child is entirely free from Faults. I know nothing
human that is so; but surely she doth not deserve the Rancour with which
she hath been treated by the Public. However, it is not my Intention, at
present, to make any Defence; but shall submit to a Compromise, which
hath been always allowed in this Court in all Prosecutions for Dulness.
I do, therefore, solemnly declare to you, Mr. Censor, that I will
trouble the World no more with any Children of mine by the same Muse."
Whether sincere or not, this last statement appears to have afforded the
greatest gratification to Richardson. "Will I leave you to Captain
Booth?" he writes triumphantly to Mrs. Donnellan, in answer to a
question she had put to him. "Captain Booth, Madam, has done his own
business. Mr. Fielding has overwritten himself, or rather _under_-
written; and in his own journal seems ashamed of his last piece; and has
promised that the same Muse shall write no more for him. The piece, in
short, is as dead as if it had been published forty years ago, as to
sale." There is much to the same effect in the worthy little printer's
correspondence; but enough has been quoted to show how intolerable to
the super-sentimental creator of the high-souled and heroic _Clarissa_
was his rival's plainer and more practical picture of matronly virtue
and modesty. 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.
At the end of the second volume of the first edition of her history was
a notice announcing the immediate appearance of the above-mentioned
_Covent-Garden Journal_, a bi-weekly paper, in which Fielding, under the
style and title of Sir Alexander Drawcansir, assumed the office of
Censor of Great Britain. The first number of this new venture was issued
on January the 4th, 1752, and the price was threepence. In plan, and
general appearance, it resembled the _Jacobite's Journal_, consisting
mainly of an introductory Essay, paragraphs of current news, often
accompanied by pointed editorial comment, miscellaneous articles, and
advertisements. One of the features of the earlier numbers was a
burlesque, but not very successful, _Journal of the present Paper War_,
which speedily involved the author in actual hostilities with the
notorious quack and adventurer Dr. John Hill, who for some time had been
publishing certain impudent lucubrations in the _London Daily
Advertiser_ under the heading of _The Inspector_; and also with
Smollett, whom he (Fielding) had ridiculed in his second number, perhaps
on account of that little paragraph in the first edition of _Peregrine
Pickle_, to which reference was made in an earlier chapter. Smollett,
always irritable and combative, retorted by a needlessly coarse and
venomous pamphlet, in which, under the name of "Habbakkuk Hilding,
Justice, Dealer and Chapman," Fielding was attacked with indescribable
brutality. Another, and seemingly unprovoked, adversary whom the
_Journal of the War_ brought upon him was Bonnel Thornton, afterwards
joint-author with George Colman of the _Connoisseur_, who, in a
production styled _Have at you All; or, The Drury Lane Journal_,
lampooned Sir Alexander with remarkable rancour and assiduity. Mr.
Lawrence has treated these "quarrels of authors" at some length; and
they also have some record in the curious collections of the elder
Disraeli. As a general rule, Fielding was far less personal and much
more scrupulous in his choice of weapons than those who assailed him;
but the conflict was an undignified one, and, as Scott has justly said,
"neither party would obtain honour by an inquiry into the cause or
conduct of its hostilities."
In the enumeration of Fielding's works it is somewhat difficult (if due
proportion be observed) to assign any real importance to efforts like
the _Covent-Garden Journal_. Compared with his novels, they are
insignificant enough. But even the worst work of such a man is notable
in its way; and Fielding's contributions to the _Journal_ are by no
means to be despised. They are shrewd lay sermons, often exhibiting much
out-of-the-way erudition, and nearly always distinguished by some of his
personal qualities. In No. 33, on "Profanity," there is a character-
sketch which, for vigour and vitality, is worthy of his best days; and
there is also a very thoughtful paper on "Reading," containing a kindly
reference to "the ingenious Author of _Clarissa_," which should have
mollified that implacable moralist. In this essay it is curious to
notice that, while Fielding speaks with due admiration of Shakespeare
and Moliere, Lucian, Cervantes, and Swift, he condemns Rabelais and
Aristophanes, although in the invocation already quoted from _Tom
Jones_, he had included both these authors among the models he admired.
Another paper in the _Covent-Garden Journal_ is especially interesting
because it affords a clue to a project of Fielding's which unfortunately
remained a project. This was a Translation of the works of Lucian, to be
undertaken in conjunction with his old colleague, the Rev. William
Young. Proposals were advertised, and the enterprise was duly heralded
by a "puff preliminary," in which Fielding, while abstaining from
anything directly concerning his own abilities, observes, "I will only
venture to say, that no Man seems so likely to translate an Author well,
as he who hath formed his Stile upon that very Author"--a sentence
which, taken in connection with the references to Lucian in _Tom Thumb_,
the _Champion_ and elsewhere, must be accepted as distinctly
autobiographic. The last number of the Covent-Garden Journal (No. 72)
was issued in November 1752. By this time Sir Alexander seems to have
thoroughly wearied of his task. With more gravity than usual he takes
leave of letters, begging the Public that they will not henceforth
father on him the dulness and scurrility of his worthy contemporaries;
"since I solemnly declare that unless in revising my former Works, I
have at present no Intention to hold any further Correspondence with the
gayer Muses."
The labour of conducting the _Covent-Garden Journal_ must have been the
more severe in that, during the whole period of its existence, the
editor was vigorously carrying out his duties as a magistrate. The
prison and political scenes in _Amelia_, which contemporary critics
regarded as redundant, and which even to us are more curious than
essential, testify at once to his growing interest in reform, and his
keen appreciation of the defects which existed both in the law itself
and in the administration of the law; while the numerous cases heard
before him, and periodically reported in his paper by his clerk, afford
ample evidence of his judicial activity. How completely he regarded
himself (Bathurst and Rigby notwithstanding) as the servant of the
public, may be gathered from the following regularly repeated notice:--
"To the PUBLIC.
"All Persons who shall for the Future, suffer by Robbers, Burglars, &c.,
are desired immediately to bring, or send, the best Description they can
of such Robbers, &c., with the Time and Place, and Circumstances of the
Fact, to Henry Fielding, Esq.; at his House in Bow Street."
Another instance of his energy in his vocation is to be found in the
little collection of cases entitled _Examples of the Interposition of
Providence, in the Detection and Punishment of Murder_, published, with
Preface and Introduction, in April 1752, and prompted, as advertisement
announces, "by the many horrid Murders committed within this last Year."
It appeared, as a matter of fact, only a few days after the execution at
Oxford, for parricide, of the notorious Miss Mary Blandy, and might be
assumed to have a more or less timely intention; but the purity of
Fielding's purpose is placed beyond a doubt by the fact that he freely
distributed it in court to those whom it seemed calculated to profit.
The only other works of Fielding which precede the posthumously
published _Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_ are the _Proposal for Making
an Effectual Provision for the Poor_, etc., a pamphlet dedicated to the
Right Honble. Henry Pelham, published in January 1753; and the _Clear
State of the Case of Elizabeth Canning_, published in March. The former,
which the hitherto unfriendly _Gentleman's_ patronisingly styles an
"excellent piece," conceived in a manner which gives "a high idea of his
[the author's] present temper, manners and ability," is an elaborate
project for the erection, _inter alia_, of a vast building, of which a
plan, "drawn by an Eminent Hand," was given, to be called the County-
house, capable of containing 5000 inmates, and including work-rooms,
prisons, an infirmary, and other features, the details of which are too
minute to be repeated in these pages, even if they had received any
attention from the Legislature, which they did not. The latter was
Fielding's contribution to the extraordinary judicial puzzle, which
agitated London in 1753-4. It is needless to do more than recall its
outline. On the 29th of January 1753, one Elizabeth Canning, a domestic
servant aged eighteen or thereabouts, and who had hitherto borne an
excellent character, returned to her mother, having been missing from
the house of her master, a carpenter in Aldermanbury, since the 1st of
the same month. She was half starved and half clad, and alleged that she
had been abducted, and confined during her absence in a house on the
Hertford Road, from which she had just escaped. This house she
afterwards identified as that of one Mother Wells, a person of very
indifferent reputation. An ill-favoured old gipsy woman named Mary
Squires was also declared by her to have been the main agent in ill-
using and detaining her. The gipsy, it is true, averred that at the time
of the occurrence she was a hundred and twenty miles away; but Canning
persisted in her statement. Among other people before whom she came was
Fielding, who examined her, as well as a young woman called Virtue Hall,
who appeared subsequently as one of Canning's witnesses. Fielding seems
to have been strongly impressed by her appearance and her story, and his
pamphlet (which was contradicted in every particular by his adversary,
John Hill) gives a curious and not very edifying picture of the
magisterial procedure of the time. In February, Wells and Squires were
tried; Squires was sentenced to death, and Wells to imprisonment and
burning in the hand. Then, by the exertions of the Lord Mayor, Sir Crisp
Gascoyne, who doubted the justice of the verdict, Squires was respited
and pardoned. Forthwith London was split up into Egyptian and Canningite
factions; a hailstorm of pamphlets set in; portraits and caricatures of
the principal personages were in all the print shops; and, to use
Churchill's words,
"--_Betty Canning_ was at least,
With _Gascoyne's_ help, a six months feast."
In April 1754, however, Fate so far prevailed against her that she
herself, in turn, was tried for perjury. Thirty-eight witnesses swore
that Squires had been in Dorsetshire; twenty-seven that she had been
seen in Middlesex. After some hesitation, quite of a piece with the rest
of the proceedings, the jury found Canning guilty; and she was
transported for seven years. At the end of her sentence she returned to
England to receive a legacy of L500, which had been left her by an
enthusiastic old lady of Newington-green. [Footnote: So says the _Annual
Register_ for 1761, p. 179. But according to later accounts (_Gent.
Mag._ xliii. 413), she never returned, dying in 1773 at Weathersfield in
Connecticut.] Her "case" is full of the most inexplicable
contradictions; and it occupies in the _State Trials_ some four hundred
and twenty closely-printed pages of the most curious and picturesque
eighteenth-century details. But how, from the 1st of January 1753 to the
29th of the same month, Elizabeth Canning really did manage to spend her
time is a secret that, to this day, remains undivulged.