Fielding.
by Austin Dobson.
PREFATORY NOTE.
From a critical point of view, the works of Fielding have received abundant examination at the hands of a long line of distinguished writers. Of these, the latest is by no means the least; and as Mr.
Leslie Stephen"s brilliant studies, in the recent _edition de luxe_ and the _Cornhill Magazine_, are now in every one"s hands, it is perhaps no more than a wise discretion which has prompted me to confine my attention more strictly to the purely biographical side of the subject.
In the present memoir, therefore, I have made it my duty, primarily, to verify such scattered anecdotes respecting Fielding as have come down to us; to correct (I hope not obtrusively) a few mis-statements which have crept into previous accounts; and to add such supplementary details as I have been able to discover for myself.
In this task I have made use of the following authorities:--
I. Arthur Murphy"s _Essay on the Life and Genius of Henry Fielding, Esq._ This was prefixed to the first collected edition of Fielding"s works published by Andrew Millar in April 1762; and it continued for a long time to be the recognised authority for Fielding"s life. It is possible that it fairly reproduces his personality, as presented by contemporary tradition; but it is misleading in its facts, and needlessly diffuse. Under pretence of respecting "the Manes of the dead," the writer seems to have found it pleasanter to fill his s.p.a.ce with vagrant discussions on the "Middle Comedy of the Greeks" and the machinery of the _Rape of the Lock_, than to make the requisite biographical inquiries. This is the more to be deplored, because, in 1762, Fielding"s widow, brother, and sister, as well as his friend Lyttelton, were still alive, and trustworthy information should have been procurable.
II. Watson"s _Life of Henry Fielding, Esq_. This is usually to be found prefixed to a selection of Fielding"s works issued at Edinburgh. It also appeared as a volume in 1807, although there is no copy of it in this form at the British Museum. It carries Murphy a little farther, and corrects him in some instances. But its author had clearly never even seen the _Miscellanies_ of 1743, with their valuable Preface, for he speaks of them as one volume, and in apparent ignorance of their contents.
III. Sir Walter Scott"s biographical sketch for Ballantyne"s _Novelist"s Library_. This was published in 1821; and is now included in the writer"s _Miscellaneous Prose Works_. Sir Walter made no pretence to original research, and even spoke slightingly of this particular work; but it has all the charm of his practised and genial pen.
IV. Roscoe"s Memoir, compiled for the one-volume edition of Fielding, published by Washbourne and others in 1840.
V. Thackeray"s well-known lecture, in the _English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century_, 1853.
VI. _The Life of Henry Fielding; with Notices of his Writings, his Times, and his Contemporaries_. By Frederick Lawrence. 1855. This is an exceedingly painstaking book; and const.i.tutes the first serious attempt at a biography. Its chief defect--as pointed out at the time of its appearance--is an ill-judged emulation of Forster"s _Goldsmith_. The author attempted to make Fielding a literary centre, which is impossible; and the attempt has involved him in needless digressions. He is also not always careful to give chapter and verse for his statements.
VII. Thomas Keightley"s papers _On the Life and Writings of Henry Fielding_ in _Fraser"s Magazine_ for January and February 1858. These, prompted by Mr. Lawrence"s book, are most valuable, if only for the author"s frank distrust of his predecessors. They are the work of an enthusiast, and a very conscientious examiner. If, as reported, Mr.
Keightley himself meditated a life of Fielding, it is much to be regretted that he never carried out his intention.
Upon the two last-mentioned works I have chiefly relied in the preparation of this study. I have freely availed myself of the material that both authors collected, verifying it always, and extending it wherever I could. Of my other sources of information--pamphlets, reviews, memoirs, and newspapers of the day--the list would be too long; and sufficient references to them are generally given in the body of the text. I will only add that I think there is scarcely a quotation of importance in these pages which has not been compared with the original; and, except where otherwise stated, all extracts from Fielding himself are taken from the first editions.
At this distance of time, new facts respecting a man of whom so little has been recorded require to be announced with considerable caution.
Some definite additions to Fielding lore I have, however, been enabled to make. Thanks to the late Colonel J. L. Chester, who was engaged, only a few weeks before his death, in friendly investigations on my behalf, I am able to give, for the first time, the date and place of Fielding"s second marriage, and the baptismal dates of all the children by that marriage, except the eldest. I am also able to fix approximately the true period of his love-affair with Miss Sarah Andrew. From the original a.s.signment at South Kensington I have ascertained the exact sum paid by Millar for _Joseph Andrews_; and in chapter v. will be found a series of extracts from a very interesting correspondence, which does not appear to have been hitherto published, between Aaron Hill, his daughters, and Richardson, respecting _Tom Jones_. Although I cannot claim credit for the discovery, I believe the present is also the first biography of Fielding which entirely discredits the unlikely story of his having been a stroller at Bartholomew Fair; and I may also, I think, claim to have thrown some additional light on Fielding"s relations with the Cibbers, seeing that the last critical essay upon the author of the _Apology_ which I have met with, contains no reference to Fielding at all. For such minor novelties as the pa.s.sage from the _Universal Spectator_, and the account of the projected translation of Lucian, etc., the reader is referred to the book itself, where these, and other waifs and strays, are duly indicated. If, in my endeavour to secure what is freshest, I have at the same time neglected a few stereotyped quotations, which have hitherto seemed indispensable in writing of Fielding, I trust I may be forgiven.
Brief as it is, the book has not been without its obligations. To Mr. B.
F. Sketchley, Keeper of the Dyce and Forster Collections at South Kensington, I am indebted for reference to the Hill correspondence, and for other kindly offices; to Mr. Frederick Locker for permission to collate Fielding"s last letter with the original in his possession. My thanks are also due to Mr. R. Arthur Kinglake, J.P., of Taunton; to the Rev. Edward Hale of Eton College, the Rev. G. C. Green of Modbury, Devon, the Rev. W. S. Shaw of Twerton-on-Avon, and Mr. Richard Garnett of the British Museum. Without some expression of grat.i.tude to the last mentioned, it would indeed be almost impossible to conclude any modern preface of this kind. If I have omitted the names of others who have been good enough to a.s.sist me, I must ask them to accept my acknowledgments although they are not specifically expressed.
EALING, _March_ 1883.
I have taken advantage of the present issue to add, in the form of Appendices, some supplementary particulars which have come to my knowledge since the book was first published. The most material of these is the curious confirmation and extension of Fielding"s love affair with Sarah Andrew. Besides these additions, a few necessary rectifications have been made in the text.
A. D.
EALING, _April_ 1889.
The approaching bi-centenary (April 22, 1907) of Fielding"s birth affords a pretext for bringing together, in a fourth Appendix, some additional particulars which have been discovered or established since the issue of the last edition of this Memoir. These particulars relate to his pedigree, his residence at Leyden as a student, his marriage to his first wife Charlotte Cradock, his Will, his library, his family and some other minor matters.
A. D.
EALING. _March_ 1907.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY YEARS--FIRST PLAYS.
Like his contemporary Smollett, Henry Fielding came of an ancient family, and might, in his Horatian moods, have traced his origin to Inachus. The lineage of the house of Denbigh, as given in Burke, fully justifies the splendid but sufficiently quoted eulogy of Gibbon. From that first Jeffrey of Hapsburgh, who came to England, _temp._ Henry III., and a.s.sumed the name of Fieldeng, or Filding, "from his father"s pretensions to the dominions of Lauffenbourg and Rinfilding," the future novelist could boast a long line of ill.u.s.trious ancestors. There was a Sir William Feilding killed at Tewkesbury, and a Sir Everard who commanded at Stoke. Another Sir William, a staunch Royalist, was created Earl of Denbigh, and died in fighting King Charles"s battles. Of his two sons, the elder, Basil, who succeeded to the t.i.tle, was a Parliamentarian, and served at Edgehill under Ess.e.x. George, his second son, was raised to the peerage of Ireland as Viscount Callan, with succession to the earldom of Desmond; and from this, the younger branch of the Denbigh family, Henry Fielding directly descended. The Earl of Desmond"s fifth son, John, entered the Church, becoming Canon of Salisbury and Chaplain to William III. By his wife Bridget, daughter of Scipio c.o.c.kain, Esq., of Somerset, he had three sons and three daughters. Edmund, the third son, was a soldier, who fought with distinction under Marlborough. When about the age of thirty, he married Sarah, daughter of Sir Henry Gould, Knt., of Sharpham Park, near Glas...o...b..ry, in Somerset, and one of the Judges of the King"s Bench.
These last were the parents of the novelist, who was born at Sharpham Park on the 22d of April 1707. One of Dr. John Fielding"s nieces, it may here be added, married the first Duke of Kingston, becoming the mother of Lady Mary Pierrepont, afterwards Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was thus Henry Fielding"s second cousin. She had, however, been born in 1689, and was consequently some years his senior.
According to a pedigree given in Nichols (_History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester_), Edmund Fielding was only a lieutenant when he married; and it is even not improbable (as Mr. Keightley conjectures from the nearly secret union of _Lieutenant_ Booth and Amelia in the later novel) that the match may have been a stolen one. At all events, the bride continued to reside at her father"s house; and the fact that Sir Henry Gould, by his will made in March 1706, left his daughter L3000, which was to be invested "in the purchase either of a Church or Colledge lease, or of lands of Inheritance," for her sole use, her husband having "nothing to doe with it," would seem (as Mr. Keightley suggests) to indicate a distrust of his military, and possibly impecunious, son-in-law. This money, it is also important to remember, was to come to her children at her death. Sir Henry Gould did not long survive the making of his will, and died in March 1710. [Footnote: Mr.
Keightley, who seems to have seen the will, dates it--doubtless by a slip of the pen--May 1708. Reference to the original, however, now at Somerset House, shows the correct date to be March 8, 1706, before which time the marriage of Fielding"s parents must therefore be placed.] The Fieldings must then have removed to a small house at East Stour (now Stower), in Dorsetshire, where Sarah Fielding was born in the following November. It may be that this property was purchased with Mrs.
Fielding"s money; but information is wanting upon the subject. At East Stour, according to the extracts from the parish register given in Hutchins"s _History of Dorset_, four children were born,--namely, Sarah, above mentioned, afterwards the auth.o.r.ess of _David Simple_, Anne, Beatrice, and another son, Edmund. Edmund, says Arthur Murphy, "was an officer in the marine service," and (adds Mr. Lawrence) "died young."
Anne died at East Stour in August 1716. Of Beatrice nothing further is known. These would appear to have been all the children of Edmund Fielding by his first wife, although, as Sarah Fielding is styled on her monument at Bath the _second_ daughter of General Fielding, it is not impossible that another daughter may have been born at Sharpham Park.
At East Stour the Fieldings certainly resided until April 1718, when Mrs. Fielding died, leaving her elder son a boy of not quite eleven years of age. How much longer the family remained there is unrecorded; but it is clear that a great part of Henry Fielding"s childhood must have been spent by the "pleasant Banks of sweetly-winding Stour" which pa.s.ses through it, and to which he subsequently refers in _Tom Jones_.
His education during this time was confided to a certain Mr. Oliver, whom Lawrence designates the "family chaplain." Keightley supposes that he was the curate of East Stour; but Hutchins, a better authority than either, says that he was the clergyman of Motcombe, a neighbouring village. Of this gentleman, according to Murphy, Parson Trulliber in _Joseph Andrews_ is a "very humorous and striking portrait." It is certainly more humorous than complimentary.
From Mr. Oliver"s fostering care--and the result shows that, whatever may have been the pig-dealing propensities of Parson Trulliber, it was not entirely profitless--Fielding was transferred to Eton. When this took place is not known; but at that time boys entered the school much earlier than they do now, and it was probably not long after his mother"s death. The Eton boys were then, as at present, divided into collegers and oppidans. There are no registers of oppidans before the end of the last century; but the Provost of Eton has been good enough to search the college lists from 1715 to 1735, and there is no record of any Henry Fielding, nor indeed of any Fielding at all. It may therefore be concluded that he was an oppidan. No particulars of his stay at Eton have come down to us; but it is to be presumed Murphy"s statement that, "when he left the place, he was said to be uncommonly versed in the Greek authors, and an early master of the Latin cla.s.sics," is not made without foundation. [Footnote: Fielding"s own words in the verses to Walpole some years later scarcely go so far:--
"_Tuscan_ and _French_ are in my Head; _Latin_ I write, and _Greek_ I-- read."] We have also his own authority (in _Tom_ _Jones_) for supposing that he occasionally, if not frequently, sacrificed "with true Spartan devotion" at the "birchen Altar," of which a representation is to be found in Mr. Maxwell Lyte"s history of the College. And it may fairly be inferred that he took part in the different sports and pastimes of the day, such as Conquering Lobs, Steal baggage, Chuck, Starecaps, and so forth. Nor does it need any strong effort of imagination to conclude that he bathed in "Sandy hole" or "Cuckow ware," attended the c.o.c.k- fights in Bedford"s Yard and the bull-baiting in Bachelor"s Acre, drank mild punch at the "Christopher," and, no doubt, was occasionally brought back by Jack Cutler, "Pursuivant of Runaways," to make his explanations to Dr. Bland the Head-Master, or Francis Goode the Usher. Among his school-fellows were some who subsequently attained to high dignities in the State, and still remained his friends. Foremost of these was George Lyttelton, later the statesman and orator, who had already commenced poet as an Eton boy with his "Soliloquy of a Beauty in the Country."
Another was the future Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, the wit and squib- writer, then known as Charles Hanbury only. A third was Thomas Winnington, for whom, in after years, Fielding fought hard with brain and pen when Tory scribblers a.s.sailed his memory. Of those who must be regarded as contemporaries merely, were William Pitt, the "Great Commoner," and yet greater Earl of Chatham; Henry Fox, Lord Holland; and Charles Pratt, Earl Camden. Gilbert West, the translator of Pindar, may also have been at Eton in Fielding"s time, as he was only a year older, and was intimate with Lyttelton. Thomas Augustine Arne, again, famous in days to come as Dr. Arne, was doubtless also at this date practising sedulously upon that "miserable cracked common flute," with which tradition avers he was wont to torment his school-fellows. Gray and Horace Walpole belong to a later period.
During his stay at Eton, Fielding had been rapidly developing from a boy into a young man. When he left school it is impossible to say; but he was probably seventeen or eighteen years of age, and it is at this stage of his career that must be fixed an occurrence which one of his biographers places much farther on. This is his earliest recorded love- affair. At Lyme Regis there resided a young lady, who, in addition to great personal charms, had the advantage of being the only daughter and heiress of one Solomon Andrew, deceased, a merchant of considerable local reputation. Lawrence says that she was Fielding"s cousin. This may be so; but the statement is unsupported by any authority. It is certain, however, that her father was dead, and that she was living "in maiden meditation" at Lyme with one of her guardians, Mr. Andrew Tucker. In his chance visits to that place, young Fielding appears to have become desperately enamoured of her, and to have sadly fluttered the Dorset dovecotes by his pertinacious and undesirable attentions. At one time he seems to have actually meditated the abduction of his "flame," for an entry in the town archives, discovered by Mr. George Roberts, sometime Mayor of Lyme, who tells the story, declares that Andrew Tucker, Esq., went in fear of his life "owing to the behaviour of Henry Fielding and his attendant, or man." Such a state of things (especially when guardians have sons of their own) is clearly not to be endured; and Miss Andrew was prudently transferred to the care of another guardian, Mr.
Rhodes of Modbury, in South Devon, to whose son, a young gentleman of Oxford, she was promptly married. Burke (_Landed Gentry_, 1858) dates the marriage in 1726, a date which is practically confirmed by the baptism of a child at Modbury in April of the following year. Burke further describes the husband as Mr. Ambrose Rhodes of Buckland House, Buckland-Tout-Saints. His son, Mr. Rhodes of Bellair, near Exeter, was gentleman of the Privy Chamber to George III.; and one of his descendants possessed a picture which pa.s.sed for the portrait of Sophia Western. The tradition of the Tucker family pointed to Miss Andrew as the original of Fielding"s heroine; but though such a supposition is intelligible, it is untenable, since he says distinctly (Book XIII.
chap. i. of _Tom Jones_) that his model was his first wife, whose likeness he moreover draws very specifically in another place, by declaring that she resembled Margaret Cecil, Lady Ranelagh, and, more nearly, "the famous Dutchess of _Mazarine_." [Footnote: See Appendix No.
I.: Fielding and Sarah Andrew.]
With this early escapade is perhaps to be connected what seems to have been one of Fielding"s earliest literary efforts. This is a modernisation in burlesque octosyllabic verse of part of Juvenal"s sixth satire. In the "Preface" to the later published _Miscellanies_, it is said to have been "originally sketched out before he was Twenty," and to have const.i.tuted "all the Revenge taken by an injured Lover." But it must have been largely revised subsequent to that date, for it contains references to Mrs. Clive, Mrs. Woffington, Cibber the younger, and even to Richardson"s _Pamela_. It has no special merit, although some of the couplets have the true Swiftian turn. If Murphy"s statement be correct, that the author "went from Eton to Leyden," it must have been planned at the latter place, where, he tells us in the preface to _Don Quixote in England_, he also began that comedy. Notwithstanding these literary distractions, he is nevertheless reported to have studied the civilians "with a remarkable application for about two years." At the expiration of this time, remittances from home failing, he was obliged to forego the lectures of the "learned Vitriarius" (then Professor of Civil Law at Leyden University), and return to London, which he did at the beginning of 1728 or the end of 1727.
The fact was that his father, never a rich man, had married again. His second wife was a widow named Eleanor Rasa; and by this time he was fast acquiring a second family. Under the pressure of his growing cares, he found himself, however willing, as unable to maintain his eldest son in London as he had previously been to discharge his expenses at Leyden.
Nominally, he made him an allowance of two hundred a year; but this, as Fielding himself explained, "any body might pay that would." The consequence was, that not long after the arrival of the latter in the Metropolis he had given up all idea of pursuing the law, to which his mother"s legal connections had perhaps first attracted him, and had determined to adopt the more seductive occupation of living by his wits.
At this date he was in the prime of youth. From the portrait by Hogarth representing him at a time when he was broken in health and had lost his teeth, it is difficult to reconstruct his likeness at twenty. But we may fairly a.s.sume the "high-arched Roman nose" with which his enemies reproached him, the dark eyes, the prominent chin, and the humorous expression; and it is clear that he must have been tall and vigorous, for he was over six feet when he died, and had been remarkably strong and active. Add to this that he inherited a splendid const.i.tution, with an unlimited capacity for enjoyment, and we have a fair idea of Henry Fielding at that moment of his career, when with pa.s.sions "tremblingly alive all o"er"--as Murphy says--he stood,
"This way and that dividing the swift mind,"
between the professions of hackney-writer and hackney-coachman. His natural bias was towards literature, and his opportunities, if not his inclinations, directed him to dramatic writing.
It is not necessary to attempt any detailed account of the state of the stage at this epoch. Nevertheless, if only to avoid confusion in the future, it will be well to enumerate the several London theatres in 1728, the more especially as the list is by no means lengthy. First and foremost there was the old Opera House in the Haymarket, built by Vanbrugh, as far back as 1705, upon the site now occupied by Her Majesty"s Theatre. This was the home of that popular Italian song which so excited the anger of thorough-going Britons; and here, at the beginning of 1728, they were performing Handel"s opera of _Siroe_, and delighting the _cognoscenti_ by _Dite che fa_, the echo-air in the same composer"s _Tolomeo_. Opposite the Opera House, and, in position, only "a few feet distant" from the existing Haymarket Theatre, was the New, or Little Theatre in the Haymarket, which, from the fact that it had been opened eight years before by "the French Comedians," was also sometimes styled the French House. Next comes the no-longer-existent theatre in Lincoln"s Inn Fields, which Christopher Rich had rebuilt in 1714, and which his son John had made notorious for pantomimes. Here the _Beggar"s Opera_, precursor of a long line of similar productions, had just been successfully produced. Finally, most ancient of them all, there was the Theatre-Royal in Drury Lane, otherwise the King"s Play House, or Old House. The virtual patentees at this time were the actors Colley Cibber, Robert Wilks, and Barton Booth. The two former were just playing the _Provok"d Husband_, in which the famous Mrs. Oldfield (Pope"s "Narcissa") had created a _furore_ by her a.s.sumption of Lady Townley. These, in February 1728, were the four princ.i.p.al London theatres. Goodman"s Fields, where Garrick made his debut, was not opened until the following year, and Covent Garden belongs to a still later date.
Fielding"s first dramatic essay--or, to speak more precisely, the first of his dramatic essays that was produced upon the stage--was a five-act comedy ent.i.tled _Love in Several Masques_. It was played at Drury Lane in February 1728, succeeding the _Provok"d Husband_. In his "Preface"
the young author refers to the disadvantage under which he laboured in following close upon that comedy, and also in being "contemporary with an Entertainment which engrosses the whole Talk and Admiration of the Town,"--i.e. the _Beggar"s Opera_. He also acknowledges the kindness of Wilks and Cibber "previous to its Representation," and the fact that he had thus acquired their suffrages makes it doubtful whether his stay at Leyden was not really briefer than is generally supposed, or that he left Eton much earlier. In either case he must have been in London some months before _Love in Several Masques_ appeared, for a first play by an untried youth of twenty, however promising, is not easily brought upon the boards in any era; and from his own utterances in _Pasquin_, ten years later, it is clear that it was no easier then than now. The sentiments of the Fustian of that piece in the following protest probably give an accurate picture of the average dramatic experiences of Henry Fielding:--