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Henry Fielding: A Memoir

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HENRY FIELDING

_A MEMOIR_
INCLUDING NEWLY DISCOVERED LETTERS
AND RECORDS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM CONTEMPORARY PRINTS

BY

G. M. GODDEN




"I am a man myself, and my heart is interested in whatever can befall the
rest of mankind."

JOSEPH ANDREWS.




PREFACE

New material alone could justify any attempt to supplement the _Fielding_
of Mr Austin Dobson. Such material has now come to light, and together
with reliable facts collected by previous biographers, forms the subject
matter of the present volume. As these pages are concerned with Fielding
the man, and not only with Fielding the most original if not the greatest
of English novelists, literary criticism has been avoided; but all
incidents, disclosed by hitherto unpublished documents, or found hidden in
the columns of contemporary newspapers, which add to our knowledge of
Fielding's personality, have been given.

The new material includes records of Fielding's childhood; documents
concerning his estate in Dorsetshire; the date and place, hitherto
undiscovered, of that central event in his life, the death of his beloved
wife, whose memorial was to be the imperishable figure of "Sophia
Western"; letters, now first published, adding to our knowledge of his
energies in social and legislative reform, and of the circumstances of his
life; many extracts from the columns of the daily press of the period;
notices, hitherto overlooked, from his contemporaries; and details from
the unexplored archives of the Middlesex Records concerning his strenuous
work as a London magistrate. The few letters by Fielding already known to
exist have been doubled in number; and a reason for the extraordinary
rarity of these letters has been found in the unfortunate destruction,
many years ago, of much of his correspondence. The charm of the one
intimate letter that we possess from the pen of the 'Father of the English
Novel,' that written to his brother John, during the voyage to Lisbon,
enhances regret at the loss of these letters.

Among the contemporary prints now first reproduced that entitled the
_Conjurors_ is of special interest, as being the only sketch of Fielding,
drawn during his lifetime, known to exist. Rough as it is, the
characteristic figure of the man, as described by his contemporaries and
drawn from memory in Hogarth's familiar plate, is perfectly apparent. The
same characteristics may be distinguished in a small figure of the
novelist introduced into the still earlier political cartoon, entitled the
_Funeral of Faction_.

Such in brief are the reasons for the existence of this volume. It remains
to express my warmest acknowledgment of Mr Austin Dobson's unfailing
counsel and assistance. My thanks are also due to Mr Ernest Fielding for
permission to reproduce the miniature which appears as the frontispiece;
to Mr Aubrey Court, of the House of Lords; to Mr E. S. W. Hart, for his
help throughout the necessary researches among the Middlesex Records; to
Mrs Deane of Gillingham; and to Mr Frederick Shum of Bath. And I am
indebted to Mr Sidney Colvin, Keeper of the Department of Prints and
Drawings in the British Museum, in regard to almost every one of the
thirty-two rare prints and cartoons now reproduced.

G. M. GODDEN.

_October_ 26, 1909.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

YOUTH

CHAPTER II

PLAY-HOUSE BARD

CHAPTER III

MARRIAGE

CHAPTER IV

POLITICAL PLAYS

CHAPTER V

HOMESPUN DRAMA

CHAPTER VI

BAR STUDENT--JOURNALIST

CHAPTER VII

COUNSELLOR FIELDING

CHAPTER VIII

_Joseph Andrews_

CHAPTER IX

THE _Miscellanies_ AND _Jonathan Wild_

CHAPTER X

PATRIOTIC JOURNALISM

CHAPTER XI

_Tom Jones_

CHAPTER XII

MR JUSTICE FIELDING

CHAPTER XIII

FIELDING AND LEGISLATION

CHAPTER XIV

_Amelia_

CHAPTER XV

JOURNALIST AND MAGISTRATE

CHAPTER XVI

POOR LAW REFORM

CHAPTER XVII

VOYAGE TO LISBON--DEATH




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_From photographs by Marie Léon_.

Henry Fielding
_From a miniature now in the possession of Mr Ernest Fielding._

Sharpham House, showing the room in which Fielding was born
_from a print published in 1826_.

Sir Henry Gould
_From a mezzotint by J. Hardy_.

Eton--1742
_From an engraving of a drawing by Cozens_.

Anne Oldfield
_From a mezzotint of a painting by J. Richardson_.

Leyden--1727
_From an engraving of a drawing by C. Pronk_.

Kitty Clive as Philida
_From a mezzotint of a painting by Veter van Bleeck, junr. 1735._

Frontispiece to Fielding's "Tom Thumb"
_By Hogarth_.

The Close, Salisbury--1798
_From an acquatint of a drawing by E. Dayes_.

Charlcombe Church, near Bath
_From an engraving of a drawing made in 1784_.

Fielding's house, East Stour, Dorsetshire
_From a print published in Hutchins' "History of Dorsetshire," 1813_.

Sir Robert Walpole--1740
_From a contemporary cartoon_.

"Pasquin"
_From a cartoon depicting a scene in "Pasquin" in which Harlequinades,
etc., triumph aver legitimate drama. Pope is leaving a box. The Signature
"W. Hogarth" is doubtful_.

Cartoon celebrating the success of "Pasquin"
_From a contemporary cartoon showing Fielding, supported by
Shakespeare, receiving an ample reward, while to Harlequin and his other
opponents is accorded a halter_.

The Little Theatre in the Haymarket
_From an engraving by Dale, showing the demolition of the Little
Theatre in 1821_.

The Green Room, Drury Lane
_From the painting by Hogarth, in the possession of Sir Edward
Tennant_.

The Temple--1738
_From an engraving of a drawing by J. Nicholas_.

Henry Fielding holding the Banner of the "Champion" newspaper
_From a contemporary cartoon showing Sir Robert Walpole laughing at the
"Funeral" of an Opposition Motion in Parliament_.

Cartoon showing Fielding, in Wig and Gown, as a supporter of the
Opposition
_From a print of 1741_.

Henry Fielding reading at the Bedford Arms
_From the frontispiece to Sir John Fielding's "Jests."_

Assignment for "Joseph Andrews"
_From the autograph now in the South Kensington Museum_.

Beaufort Buildings, Strand, in 1725
_From a watercolour drawing by Paul Sandby, 1725_.

Prior Park, near Bath, the seat of Ralph Allen, 1750
_From an engraving of a contemporary drawing_.

George, First Baron Lyttelton
_From a portrait by an unknown artist_.

Theatre Ticket for Fielding's "Mock Doctor"
_The signature "W. Hogarth" is doubtful_.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu--1710
_From an engraving by Caroline Watson, from a miniature in the
possession of the Marquis of Bute_.

The Bow Street Police Court, Sir John Fielding presiding
_From the "Newgate Calendar"_, 1795.

Edward Moore
_From a frontispiece in Chalmers' "British Essayists"_ 1817.

Sir John Fielding
_From a mezzotint of a painting by Nathaniel Hone, R.A._

Ralph Allen
_From a chalk drawing by W. Hoare, R.A._

Henry Fielding
_From an engraving of a pen and ink sketch, made by Hogarth after
Fielding's death_.

Henry Fielding, defending Betty Canning from her accusers, the Lord
Mayor, Dr Hill, and the Gipsy
_From a contemporary print, now first reproduced, and the only known
sketch of Fielding made during his lifetime_.

Justice Saunders Welch
_From an engraving of a sketch by Hogarth_.

Ryde--1795
_From an engraving of a drawing by Charles Tomkins_.

Lisbon--1793
_From a mezzotint of a drawing by Noel_.

The design on the cover is a copy, slightly enlarged, of an impression of
Fielding's seal, attached to an autograph letter in the British Museum.




HENRY FIELDING




CHAPTER I

YOUTH

"I shall always be so great a pedant as to call a man of no
learning a man of no education."--_Amelia_.


Henry Fielding was born at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, on the 22nd
of April 1707. His birth-room, a room known as the Harlequin Chamber,
looked out over the roof of a building which once was the private chapel
of the abbots of Glastonbury; for Sharpham Park possessed no mean
history. Built in the sixteenth century by that distinguished prelate,
scholar, and courtier Abbot Richard Beere, the house had boasted its
chapel, hall, parlour, chambers, storehouses and offices; its fishponds
and orchards; and a park in which might be kept some four hundred head of
deer. It was in this fair demesne that the aged, pious, and benevolent
Abbot Whiting, Abbot Richard's successor, was seized by the king's
commissioners, and summarily hung, drawn, and quartered on the top of the
neighbouring Tor Hill. Sharpham thereupon "devolved" upon the crown; but
the old house remained, standing in peaceful seclusion where the pleasant
slope of Polden Hill overlooks the Somersetshire moors, till the birth of
the 'father of the English Novel' brought a lasting distinction to the
domestic buildings of Abbot Beere. In the accompanying print, published
in 1826, the little window of the Harlequin Chamber may be seen, above
the low roofs of the abbots' chapel.

That Henry Fielding should have been born among buildings raised by
Benedictine hands is not incongruous; for no man ever more heartily
preached and practised the virtue of open-handed charity; none was more
ready to scourge the vices of arrogance, cruelty and avarice; no English
novelist has left us brighter pictures of innocence and goodness. And it
was surely a happy stroke of that capricious Fortune to whom Fielding so
often refers, to allot a Harlequin Chamber for the birth of the author of
nineteen comedies; and yet more appropriate to the robust genius of the
Comic Epic was the accident that placed on the wall, beneath the window
of his birth-room, a jovial jest in stone. For here some
sixteenth-century humorist had displayed the arms of Abbot Beere in the
form of a convivial rebus or riddle--to wit, a cross and two beer flagons.

Soon after the Civil Wars, Sharpham passed into the hands of the
'respectable family' of Gould. By the Goulds the house was considerably
enlarged; and, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, was in the
possession of a distinguished member of the family, Sir Henry Gould,
Knight, and Judge of the King's Bench. Sir Henry had but two children, a
son Davidge Gould, and a daughter Sarah. This only daughter married a
well-born young soldier, the Hon. Edmund Fielding; a marriage which,
according to family assertions, was without the consent of her parents and
"contrary to their good likeing." [1] And it was in the old home of the
Somersetshire Goulds that the eldest son of this marriage, Henry Fielding,
was born.

Thus on the side of his mother, Sarah Gould, Fielding belonged to just
that class of well-established country squires whom later he was to
immortalise in the beautiful and benevolent figure of Squire Allworthy,
and in the boisterous, brutal, honest Western. And the description of
Squire Allworthy's "venerable" house, with its air of grandeur "that
struck you with awe," its position on the sheltered slope of a hill
enjoying "a most charming prospect of the valley beneath," its
surroundings of a wild and beautiful park, well-watered meadows fed with
sheep, the ivy-grown ruins of an old abbey, and far-off hills and sea,
preserves, doubtless, the features of the ancient and stately domain
owned by the novelist's grandfather.

If it was to the 'respectable' Goulds that Fielding owed many of his
rural and administrative characteristics, such as that practical zeal and
ability which made him so excellent a magistrate, it is in the family of
his father that we find indications of those especial qualities of
vigour, of courage, of the generous and tolerant outlook of the well-born
man of the world, that characterise Henry Fielding. And it is also in
these Fielding ancestors that something of the reputed wildness of their
brilliant kinsman may be detected.

For in her wilful choice of Edmund Fielding for a husband, Sir Henry
Gould's only daughter brought, assuredly, a disturbing element into the
quiet Somersetshire home. The young man was of distinguished birth, even
if he was not, as once asserted, of the blood royal of the Hapsburgs.
[2] His ancestor, Sir John Fielding, had received a knighthood for bravery
in the French wars of the fourteenth century. A Sir Everard Fielding led a
Lancastrian army during the Wars of the Roses. Sir William, created Earl
of Denbigh, fell fighting for the king in the Civil Wars, where, says
Clarendon, "he engaged with singular courage in all enterprises of
danger"; a phrase which recalls the description of Henry Fielding "that
difficulties only roused him to struggle through them with a peculiar
spirit and magnanimity." Lord Denbigh fell, covered with wounds, when
fighting as a volunteer in Prince Rupert's troop; while his eldest son,
Basil, then a mere youth, fought as hotly for the Parliament. Lord
Denbigh's second son, who like his father was a devoted loyalist, received
a peerage, being created Earl of Desmond; and two of his sons figure in a
wild and tragic story preserved by Pepys. "In our street," says the
Diarist, writing in 1667, "at the Three Tuns Tavern I find a great hubbub;
and what was it but two brothers had fallen out and one killed the other.
And who s'd. they be but the two Fieldings; one whereof, Bazill, was page
to my Lady Sandwich; and he hath killed the other, himself being very
drunk, and so is sent to Newgate." It was a brother of these unhappy
youths, John Fielding, a royal chaplain and Canon of Salisbury, who by his
marriage with a Somersetshire lady, became father of Edmund Fielding.

Such was Henry Fielding's ancestry, and it cannot be too much insisted on
that, throughout all the vicissitudes of his life, he was ever a man of
breeding, no less than a man of wit. "His manners were so gentlemanly,"
said his friend Mrs Hussey, "that even with the lower classes with which
he frequently condescended to chat, such as Sir Roger de Coverley's old
friends, the Vauxhall watermen, they seldom outstepped the limits of
propriety." And a similar recognition comes from the hand of a great, and
not too friendly, critic. To "the very last days of his life," wrote
Thackeray, "he retained a grandeur of air, and although worn down by
disease his aspect and presence imposed respect on the people around him."

This Denbigh ancestry recalls a pleasant example of Fielding's wit,
preserved in a story told by his son, and recorded in the pages of that
voluminous eighteenth-century anecdotist, John Nichols. "Henry Fielding,"
says Nichols, "being once in company with the Earl of Denbigh, and the
conversation's turning on Fielding's being of the Denbigh family, the
Earl asked the reason why they spelt their names differently; the Earl's
family doing it with the E first (Feilding), and Mr Henry Fielding with
the I first (Fielding). 'I cannot tell, my Lord,' answered Harry, 'except
it be that my branch of the family were the first that knew how to
spell.'"

In accordance with the fighting traditions of his race, Edmund Fielding
went into the army; his name appearing as an ensign in the 1st Foot
Guards. Also, as became a Fielding, he distinguished himself, we are
told, in the "Wars against France with much Bravery and Reputation"; and
it was probably owing to active service abroad that the birth of his
eldest son took place in his wife's old Somersetshire home. The date fits
in well enough with the campaigns of Ramilies, Oudennarde and Malplaquet.
Soon after Henry's birth, however, his father had doubtless left the Low
Countries, for, about 1709, he appears as purchasing the colonelcy of an
Irish Regiment. This regiment was ordered, in 1710, to Spain; but before
that year the colonel and his wife and son had a separate home provided
for them, by the care of Sir Henry Gould. At what precise date is
uncertain, but some time before 1710, Sir Henry had purchased an estate
at East Stour in Dorsetshire, consisting of farms and lands of the value
of £4750, intending to settle some or the whole of the same on his
daughter and her children. And already, according to a statement by the
colonel, the old judge had placed his son-in-law in possession of some or
all of this purchase, sending him oxen to plough his ground, and
promising him a "Dairye of Cows." Sir Henry moreover had, said his
son-in-law, declared his intention "to spend the vacant Remainder of his
life," sometimes with his daughter, her husband, and children at Stour,
and sometimes with his son Davidge, presumably at Sharpham. But in March,
1710, Sir Henry's death frustrated his planned retirement in the Vale of
Stour; although three years later, in 1713, his intentions regarding a
Dorsetshire home for his daughter were carried out by the conveyance to
her [3] and her children of the Stour estate, for her sole enjoyment. The
legal documents are careful to recite that the rents and profits should be
paid to Mrs Fielding or her children, and her receipt given, and that the
said Edmund "should have nothing to do nor intermeddle therewith."

In this settlement of the East Stour farms, to the greater part of which
Henry Fielding, then six years old, would be joint heir with his sisters,
Colonel Fielding himself seems to have had to pay no less than £1750,
receiving therefor "a portion of the said lands." So by 1713 both Edmund
Fielding and his wife were settled, as no inconsiderable landowners,
among the pleasant meadows of Stour; and there for the next five years
Henry's early childhood was passed. Indeed, Mrs Fielding must have been
at Stour when her eldest son was but three years old, for the baptism of
a daughter, Sarah, appears in the Stour registers in November 1710. This
entry is followed by the baptism of Anne in 1713, of Beatrice in 1714, of
Edmund in 1716, and by the death of Anne in the last-named year, Henry
being then nine years old.

According to Arthur Murphy, Fielding's earliest and too often inaccurate
biographer, the boy received "the first rudiments of his education at
home, under the care of the Revd. Mr Oliver." Mr Oliver was the curate of
Motcombe, a neighbouring village; and we have the authority of Murphy and
of Hutchins, the historian of Dorset, for finding 'a very humorous and
striking portrait' of this pedagogue in the Rev. Mr Trulliber, the
pig-breeding parson of _Joseph Andrews_. If this be so, Harry Fielding's
first tutor at Stour was of a figure eminently calculated to foster the
comic genius of his pupil. "He" (Trulliber), wrote that pupil, some thirty
years later, "was indeed one of the largest Men you should see, and could
have acted the part of Sir _John Falstaff_ without stuffing. Add to this,
that the Rotundity of his Belly was considerably increased by the
shortness of his Stature, his shadow ascending very near as far in height
when he lay on his Back, as when he stood on his Legs. His Voice was loud
and hoarse, and his Accents extremely broad; to complete the whole he had
a Stateliness in his Gait when he walked, not unlike that of a Goose, only
he stalked slower." It appears that the widow of the Motcombe curate
denied the alleged portrait; but the house where Mr Oliver lived, "seemed
to accord with Fielding's description ... and an old woman who remembered
him observed that 'he dearly loved a bit of good victuals, and a drop of
drink.'" Bearing in mind the great novelist's own earnest declaration that
he painted "not men but manners," we may fairly assume that his
Dorsetshire tutor belonged to that class of coarse farmer-parson so justly
satirised in the person of Trulliber. According to another sketch of
Fielding's life, his early education was also directed by the rector of
Stour Provost, "his Parson Adams." [4]

While Harry Fielding was thus learning his first rudiments, his father,
the colonel, seems to have been engaged in less useful pursuits in
London. The nature of these pursuits appears from a _Bill of Complaint_,
which by a happy chance has been preserved, between "Edmund Fielding of
East Stour, Dorsetshire," and one Robert Midford, pretending to be a
captain of the army. In this _Bill_ [5] the said Edmund declares that in
1716, being then resident in London, he often frequented Princes
Coffee-house in the Parish of St James. At Princes he found his company
sought by the reputed Captain Robert Midford, who "prevailed upon him to
play a game called 'Faro' for a small matter of diversion, but by degrees
drew him on to play for larger sums, and by secret and fraudulent means
obtained very large sums, in particular notes and bonds for £500."
Further, the colonel entered into a bond of £200 to one Mrs Barbara
Midford, "sister or pretended sister of the said Robert"; and so finally
was threatened with outlawry by 'Captain' Midford for, presumably, payment
of these debts. How Colonel Edmund finally escaped from the clutches of
these rogues does not appear; but it is clear enough that his Dorsetshire
meadows were a safer place than Princes Coffee-house for a gentleman who
could lose £500 at faro to a masquerading army captain. Also Sir Henry
Gould's wisdom becomes apparent, in bequeathing his daughter an
inheritance with which her husband was to have "nothing to doe."

In 1718, two years after Colonel Fielding's experience at Princes, Mrs
Fielding died, leaving six young children to her husband's care, two sons
and four daughters, Henry, the eldest being but eleven years old. Her
death is recorded in the East Stour registers as follows:--"Sarah, Wife
of the Hon. Edmund Fielding Esqre. and daughter of Sir Henry Gould Kt.
April 18 1718."

About this time (the dates vary between 1716 and 1719) Edmund Fielding
was appointed Colonel of the Invalids, an appointment which he appears to
have held until his death. And within two years of the death of his first
wife, Colonel Fielding must have married again, for in 1720 we find him
and his then wife, _Anne_, selling some 153 acres with messuages,
barns and gardens, in East and West Stour, to one Awnsham Churchill,
Esquire. What relation, if any, this land had to the property of the
colonel's late wife and her children does not appear.

Some time in 1719, the year after his mother's death, or early in 1720,
Henry was sent to Eton, as appears from his father's statement, made in
February 1721, that his eldest son "who is now upwards of thirteen yeares
old is and for more than a yeare last past hath been maintained ... at
Eaton schoole, the yearely expence whereof costs ... upwards of £60." And
the boy must have been well away from the atmosphere of his home, in
these first years after his mother's death, if the allegations of his
grandmother, old Lady Gould, may be believed.

These hitherto unknown records of Henry Fielding's boyhood are to be
found in the proceedings of a Chancery suit begun by Lady Gould, on
behalf of her six grandchildren, Henry, Edmund, [6] Katherine, Ursula,
Sarah and Beatrice, three years after the death of their mother--namely,
on the 10th of February 1721, and instituted in the name of Henry Fielding
as complainant. Lady Gould opens her grandchildren's case with a
comprehensive indictment of her son-in-law. After reciting that her
daughter Sarah had married Edmund Fielding "without the consent of her
Father or Mother and contrary to their good likeing," Lady Gould mentions
her husband's bequest to their daughter, Sarah Fielding, of £3000 in trust
to be laid out in the purchase of lands for the benefit of her and her
children "with direction that the said Edmund Fielding should have nothing
to do nor intermeddle therewith." And how Sir Henry did in his lifetime
purchase "Eastover" estate for his daughter, but died before the trust was
completed; and that in 1713 his trustees, Edmund Fielding consenting,
settled the said estate upon trust for Sarah Fielding and her children
after her, the rents and profits to be paid for her, and acknowledged by
her receipt "without her Husband." And that if Sarah Fielding died
intestate the estate be divided among her children. The bill then shows
that Sarah Fielding did die intestate; and that then Henry and his sisters
and brother "being all Infants of tender years and uncapable of managing
their own affairs and to take Care thereof, well hoped that ... their
Trustees would have taken Care to receive the Rents of the said premises,"
and have applied the same for their maintenance and education. One of
these trustees, we may note, was Henry Fielding's uncle, Davidge Gould.
This reasonable hope of the six "Infants" was however, according to their
grandmother, wholly disappointed. For their uncle Davidge and his
co-trustee, one William Day, allowed Edmund Fielding to receive the rents,
nay "entered into a Combination and Confederacy to and with the said
Edmund Fielding," refusing to intermeddle with the said trust, whereby the
children were in great danger of losing their means of maintenance and
education. And this was by no means all. Lady Gould proceeds to point out
that her son-in-law had, since his wife's death, "intermarried with
one ... Rapha ... Widow an Italian a Person of the Roman Catholick
Profession who has severall children of her own and one who kept an eating
House in London, and not at all fitt to have the care of [the
complainants'] Education and has now two daughters in a Monastery beyond
Sea." It is not difficult to conceive the attitude of Lady Gould of
Sharpham Park to an Italian widow who kept an eating-house; but worse yet,
in the view of those 'No Popery' days, was to follow. "Not only so," says
her ladyship, "the said Edmund Fielding ... threatens to take your
[complainants] from school into his own custody altho' [their] said
Grandmother has taken a House in the City of New Sarum with an intent to
have [her granddaughters] under her Inspection and where ... Katherine,
Ursula and Sarah are now at school"; and "the said Mr Fielding doth give
out in speeches that he will do with [the complainants] what he thinks
fitt, and has openly commended the Manner of Education of young persons in
Monasteryes."

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