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 p.r.o.nounced Amelia herself to be "the most pleasing heroine of all the romances." [1]
But to the majority of readers Amelia is, a.s.suredly, 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 l.u.s.tre 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 p.a.w.nbroker; whether betraying her own n.o.ble 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_ a.s.sures 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 a.s.suaging the misfortunes of Captain William Booth. For indeed Captain Booth has but one substantial t.i.tle 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 pa.s.sion, 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 ident.i.ty 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 pa.s.sion 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 ca.s.sock 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sages, 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 pa.s.sage of warm praise for the characterisation, the morality, and the "n.o.ble 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 compa.s.sionate 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.
CHAPTER XV
JOURNALIST AND MAGISTRATE
"However vain or romantic the Attempt may seem I am sanguine enough to aim at serving the n.o.ble Interests of Religion, Virtue, and good Sense, by these my lucubrations."
The _Covent Garden Journal_. No. 5.
Nothing could be more characteristic of Fielding"s active spirit than were the early months of 1752. For, no sooner had he deposited the four volumes of _Amelia_ in the hands of the public, essaying to win his readers over to a love of virtue and a hatred of vice, by placing before their eyes that true "model of human life," than we find him launching a direct attack on the follies and evils of the age, by means of his old weapon, the press.
The first number of the _Covent Garden Journal_ appeared on the 4th of January, and its pages, produced under Fielding"s own management and apparently largely written by his own pen, provided satires on folly, invectives against vice, and incitements to goodness and sense, delivered in the name of one _Sir Alexander Drawcansir, Knt. Censor of Great Britain_. [1] The new paper ran but for seventy-two numbers; perhaps for all the wit and learning, the fire and zest of its columns, the public were reluctant to buy their own lashings. But it may be doubted whether, except in the pages of his three great novels, Henry Fielding ever revealed himself more completely than in these his last informal "lucubrations." Here, the active Justice, the accomplished scholar, the lawyer, and man of the world, the first wit of his day, talks to us of a hundred topics, chosen indeed on the spur of the moment, but discussed in his own incomparable words, and with the now mature authority of one, who had "dived into the inmost Recesses of Human Nature." No subject is too abstruse, none too trifling, for _Mr Censor_ to illumine. Freed from the political bands of the earlier newspapers, this last _Journal_, produced be it remembered by a man in shattered health, and distracted by the squalid business of a Bow Street Court-room, ranges over an amazing compa.s.s of life and manners.
Thus, one January morning, _Sir Alexander"s_ readers would open their paper to find him deploring the decline of "a Religion sometime ago professed in this Country, and which, if my Memory fails me not was called Christian." The following Sat.u.r.day they are presented with a learned and pleasant argument to prove that every male critic should be eighteen years of age, and "BE ABLE TO READ." A few days later the pages of writers purveying the prevalent "Infidelity, Scurrility, and Indecency" are ingeniously allotted to various uses. In February the _Journal_ accords a n.o.ble tribute "to that great Triumvirate Lucian, Cervantes, and Swift"; not indeed "for that Wit and Humour alone, which they all so eminently possesst, but because they all endeavoured with the utmost Force of their Wit and Humour, to expose and extirpate those Follies and Vices which chiefly prevailed in their several Countries." The design of Aristophanes and Rabelais on the other hand, appears to _Mr Censor_, if he may speak his opinion freely, "very plainly to have been to ridicule all Sobriety, Modesty, Decency, Virtue, and Religion out of the world." From such considerations it is an easy pa.s.sage to a definition of "real Taste" as derived from a "nice Harmony between the Imagination and the Judgment"; and to these final censorial warnings:--"_Evil Communications corrupt good Manners_ is a quotation of St Paul from Menander. EVIL BOOKS CORRUPT AT ONCE BOTH OUR MANNERS AND OUR TASTE." Four days after this learned "lucubration" the voice of the warm-hearted magistrate speaks in a reminder of the prevailing abject misery of the London poor who "in the most miserable lingering Manner do daily perish for Want in this Metropolis." And in almost the next number his Honour gives his readers letters from the fair _Cordelia_, from _Sarah Scandal_, and from other correspondents, of a wit pleasant enough to drive London"s poverty far from their minds. Two days after attending to these ladies, the _Censor_ takes up his keenest weapons in an attack on that "detestable vice of slander" by which is taken away the "_immediate Jewel of a Man"s Soul_,"
his good name; a crime comparable to that of murder. Here we have _Sir Alexander_ speaking with the same voice as did the playwright and journalist of ten years previously, when he declared, in his _Miscellanies_, that to stab a man"s character "in the dark" is no less an offence than to stab his flesh in the same treacherous manner. Indeed, throughout these last columns of weekly satire, wit, and learning, Fielding remains true to the constant tenor of his genius. He exposes the miser, the seducer of innocence, the self-seeker, the place-hunter, the degraded vendor of moral poison, the "charitable" hypocrite, with the same fierce moral energy as that with which, when but a lad of one and twenty, he first a.s.sailed the vices of the society in which his own lot was cast.
His unconquerable energy, an energy that neither sickness nor distress could abate, still a.s.saults that "cursed Maxim ... that Everybody"s business is n.o.body"s." And his wit has lost none of its point when thrusting at the lesser follies of the day; at the fair Clara"s devotion to her pet monkey; at the insolence of the Town Beau at the playhouse; at the arrogance of carters in the streets; at the vagaries of fashion according to which Belinda graces the theatre with yards of ruff one day, and on the next discards that covering so entirely that the snowy scene in the boxes "becomes extremely delightful to the eyes of every Beholder."
It is quite impossible to convey, within the limits of a few pages, all that _Sir Alexander_ tells us of what he sees and hears, as the tragi-comedy of life pa.s.ses before his Bow Street windows. For Fielding possessed in the highest degree the art of hearing, to use his own a.n.a.lysis, not with the ear only (an organ shared by man with "other Animals") but also with the head, and with the heart; just as his eye could penetrate beneath the velvet coat of the prosperous scoundrel, the reputation of the illiterate author, or the sorry rags of some honest hero of the gutter. And his _Covent Garden Journal_ is, in truth, his journal of eleven months of a life into the forty odd years of which were compressed both the insight of genius, and the activities of twenty average men. Such a record cannot be sifted into a summary. The acknowledged motive of this last of Fielding"s newspapers is, however, concise enough; and does equal honour to his patriotism and his humanity.
The age, as it seemed to him, was an age of public degradation. Religion was vanishing from the life of the people; politics were a petty question of party jealousy; literary taste was falling to the level of alehouse wit and backstairs scandal; the youth of the nation were completing their education, when fifteen or sixteen years old, by a course of the Town, and then qualifying for a graduate"s degree in like knowledge, by a foreign tour; the "mob" was gaining a dangerous excess of power; the leaders of society were past masters and mistresses of vice and folly; the poor in the streets were sunk in misery, or brutalised into reckless crime. This was the England that _Mr Censor_ saw from his house in Bow Street; this was the England which he set out to purify; and the means which he chose were his own familiar weapons of satire and ridicule. Of these, ridicule, he declares, when his _Journal_ was but four weeks old, "is commonly a stronger and better method of attacking Vice than the severer kind of Satire." In accordance with which view, _General Sir Alexander_ is represented, in a mock historic forecast, as having, in the s.p.a.ce of twelve months, entirely cleansed his country from the evils afflicting it, by means of a "certain Weapon called a Ridicule." These evils moreover Fielding held to be most readily combated by a.s.sailing "those base and scandalous Writings which the Press hath lately poured in such a torrent upon us that the Name of an Author is in the ears of all good Men become almost an infamous appelation"; and, accordingly, the first number of his new paper discloses _Sir Alexander_ in full crusade against these Grub-Street writers. But that he soon perceived the quixotic impolicy of such a campaign, appears very clearly, as early as the fifth number of the _Journal_:--"when Hercules undertook to cleanse the Stables of Augeas (a Work not much unlike my present Undertaking) should any little clod of Dirt more filthy perhaps than all the rest have chanced to bedawb him, how unworthy his Spirit would it have been to have polluted his Hands, by seizing the dirty clod, and crumbling it to Pieces. He should have known that such Accidents were incident to such an Undertaking: which though both a useful and heroic office, was yet none of the cleanliest; since no Man, I believe, ever removed great quant.i.ties of Dirt from any Place without finding some of it sticking to his skirts." Such dirty clods were undoubtedly thrown by nameless antagonists, as unworthy of Fielding"s steel as was one whose name has come down to us, the despicable Dr John Hill, who once suffered a public caning at Ranelagh; and one clod, "more filthy perhaps than all the rest," soiled the hands of Smollett. [2] But the dirt which was very freely flung on to our eighteenth-century Hercules has, by now, fallen back, with great justice, on to the heads of his abusers. Fielding has placed on record, in the _Journal_, his conviction that the man who reads the works of the five heroic satirists, Lucian, Cervantes, Swift, Moliere and Shakespeare, "must either have a very bad Head, or a very bad Heart, if he doth not become both a Wiser and a better Man." To-day, "party and prejudice" having subsided, we are ready to say the same of the readers of the _Covent Garden Journal_; perceiving that, if _Mr Censor_, like his five great forerunners, chose to send his satire "laughing into the World," it was that he might better effect the "glorious Purpose" announced in the fifth number of his paper: "However vain or romantic the Attempt may seem, I am sanguine enough to aim at serving the n.o.ble Interests of Religion, Virtue, and good Sense, by these my Lucubrations."
To most men the production, twice a week, of a newspaper so wide in scope as the _Covent Garden Journal_ (for its columns included the news of the day, as well as the manifold "censorial" energies of _Sir Alexander_) would have been occupation enough; especially with a "const.i.tution now greatly impaired and enfeebled," and when "labouring under attacks of the gout, which were, of course, severer than ever."
But there is no hint of either editorial or valetudinarian seclusion in the fragmentary glimpses obtainable of Mr Justice Fielding during these eleven months of 1752. Thus, by an advertis.e.m.e.nt recurring throughout the _Journal_, he expressly invites to his house in Bow Street, "All Persons, who shall for the Future suffer by Robbers Burglars &c.," that they may bring him "the best Description they can of such Robbers, &c., with the Time, and Place, and Circ.u.mstances of the Fact"; and that this invitation was likely to bring half London within his doors appears from Fielding"s own description of the condition of the capital at the time. "There is not a street," he declares, speaking of Westminster, "which doth not swarm all day with beggars, and all night with thieves. Stop your coach at what shop you will, however expeditious the tradesman is to attend you, a beggar is commonly beforehand with him; and if you should directly face his door the tradesman must often turn his head while you are talking to him, or the same beggar, or some other thief at hand will pay a visit to his shop!"
And nothing could prove more conclusively the arduousness of Fielding"s work as a magistrate than the record of the last ten days of January, 1752. On the night of the 17th a peculiarly brutal murder had been perpetrated on a poor higgler in Ess.e.x; and the _Journal_ for January 28, tells us how Fielding "spent near eight hours," examining, separately, suspected persons, "at the desire of several gentlemen of Fortune in the County of Ess.e.x"; having on the previous Friday and Sat.u.r.day, been engaged "above Twenty hours in taking Depositions concerning this Fact." Then, on the day after the arrival of the murder suspects, we find two of the Sh.o.r.editch constables bringing no fewer than ten "idle lewd and disorderly" men and women before the Justice; a woman was charged by a diamond seller on suspicion of feloniously receiving "three Brilliant Diamonds"; Mr Welch, the notable High Constable of Holborn, brought seventeen "idle and lewd Persons" whom he had apprehended the night before; and, to complete this single day"s work, an Italian was brought in, "all over covered with [the] Blood" of a brother Italian, whose head he had almost cut off. Twenty-nine cases on one day, and these in the midst of eight hour examinations concerning a murder, were surely work enough to satisfy even Fielding"s energies. And, as another entry in his _Journal_ mentions the examination of a suspected thief "very late at Night," there seems to have been no hour out of the twenty-four in which the great novelist did not hold himself at the service of the public.
Meanwhile, the criminal licence of the streets was now receiving Ministerial attention. The King"s Speech, delivered at the opening of Parliament in the previous November, had contained a pa.s.sage which might have been inspired by Fielding himself: "I cannot conclude," said His Majesty, "without recommending to you in the most earnest manner, to consider seriously of some effectual provisions to suppress those audacious crimes of Robbery and Violence which are now become so frequent...and which have proceeded in great Measure from that profligate Spirit of Irreligion, Idleness, Gaming, and Extravagance, which has of late extended itself in an uncommon degree, to the Dishonour of the Nation, and to the great Offence and Prejudice of the sober and industrious Part of the People." Six weeks later the first number of the _Journal_, makes comment on the need of fresh legislation to suppress drunkenness; and on the twenty first of the month _Sir Alexander_ announces, with something of special information in his tone, that the immediate suppression of crimes of violence "we can with Pleasure a.s.sure the Public is at present the chief attention of Parliament."
It must have been with something of the pleasure which he so earnestly desires in one of the last utterances of his pen--"the pleasure of thinking that, in the decline of my health and life, I have conferred a great and lasting Benefit on my Country,"--that Fielding saw the royal a.s.sent given, in the following March, to an Act for the "_better preventing Thefts and Robberies and for regulating Places of Public Entertainment, and punishing Persons keeping disorderly Houses_."
[3] For this Act is directed to the suppression of four of the abuses so strongly denounced, twelve months previously, in his own _Enquiry_; and when we recall the fact that he had already submitted, to the Lord Chancellor, draft legislation for the suppression of robberies, it is at least a plausible surmise that here we have a memorial of Henry Fielding"s patriotic energy, preserved on the pages of the Statute Book itself.
[4] The four points so specially urged in the _Enquiry_, and here made law, are the suppression of the "mult.i.tude of places of Entertainment" for the working cla.s.ses; the better suppression of Gaming Houses; the punishment of the scandalous advertis.e.m.e.nts offering rewards "and no questions asked" for stolen goods; and the payment of certain prosecutors for their expenses in time and trouble, when a conviction had been obtained.
In this same month of March another Act, which closely concerned Fielding"s official work, received the royal a.s.sent. This was an Act "for better preventing the horrid Crime of Murder." [5] The pressing need of such a measure had been already urged in the _Covent Garden journal_. In February the _Journal_ declares that _"More shocking Murders have been committed within the last Year, than for many Years before. To what can this be so justly imputed as to the manifest decline of Religion among the lower People. A matter, which even, in a Civil Sense, demands the attention of the Government."_ And Mr Censor returns to the subject on March 3: _"More Murders and horrid Barbarities have been committed within the last twelvemonth, than during many preceding years. This as we have before observed, is princ.i.p.ally to be attributed to the Declension of Religion among the Common People."_ By the end of the month the above-named Act had received the royal a.s.sent; and the first clause thereof again yielded Fielding the satisfaction of seeing a measure which he had warmly recommended in his Enquiry now placed on the Statute Book, namely the clause that the execution of the criminal be made immediate on his conviction. This Act, moreover, provides for the abatement of another scandal exposed by Fielding many years previously, in the pages of Jonathan Wild, that of the excessive supply of drink allowed to condemned prisoners.
In the following month Fielding carried out a scheme, conceived he tells us "some time since," for combating this prevalence of murder. This was his shilling pamphlet, published about April 14, ent.i.tled "Examples of the Interposition of Providence in the _Detection_ and _Punishment_ of MURDER.
Containing above thirty cases, in which this dreadful crime hath been brought to light in the most extraordinary and miraculous manner." The advertis.e.m.e.nt describes the _Examples_ as _"very proper to be given to all the inferior Kind of People; and particularly to the Youth of both s.e.xes, whose natural Love of Stories will lead them to read with Attention what cannot fail of Infusing in to their tender Minds an early Dread and Abhorrence of staining their Hands with the Blood of their Fellow-creatures"_ Low as was the price, a "large allowance" was made by Andrew Millar to those who bought any quant.i.ty; and Fielding distributed the little volume freely in Court.
The thirty-three _Examples_ are introduced and concluded by Fielding"s own denunciation of this, "the blackest sin, which can contaminate the hands, or pollute the soul of man." And from these pages we may learn his own solemnly declared belief in a peculiarly "immediate interposition of the Divine providence" in the detection of this crime; and also his faith in "the fearful and tremendous sentence of eternal punishment" as that divinely allotted to the murderer. He warns the murderer, moreover, that by hurrying a fellow-creature to a sudden and unprepared death he may be guilty of destroying not only his victim"s body, but also his soul. And it may be questioned whether Fielding ever put his unrivalled mastery of style to a n.o.bler intention than in the closing words of this pamphlet, words designed to be read by the lowest of the people: "Great courage may, perhaps, bear up a bad mind (for it is sometimes the property of such) against the most severe sentence which can be p.r.o.nounced by the mouth of a human judge; but where is the fort.i.tude which can look an offended Almighty in the face? Who can bear the dreadful thought of being confronted with the spirit of one whom we have murdered, in the presence of all the Host of Heaven, and to have justice demanded against our guilty soul, before that most awful judgement-seat, where there is infinite justice as well as infinite power?"
The dedication of this pamphlet, dated Bow Street, April 8, 1752, is addressed to Dr Madox, Bishop of Worcester, and in it Fielding recalls a conversation he had some time previously had with that prelate, in which he had mentioned the plan of such a book, and received immediate encouragement from his lordship. A further appreciation of the _Examples_ appears in a paragraph in the _Journal_ for May 5: "Last week a certain Colonel of the Army bought a large number of the book called _Examples of the Interposition of Providence in the Detection and Punishment of Murder_, in Order to distribute them amongst the private soldiers of his Regiment. An Example well worthy of Imitation!"
Fielding never allows us to forget for any length of time one or another of his contrasting activities, however absorbed he may seem to be in some one field of action. Now, when he is plunged in a hand-to-hand struggle with the criminal conditions of London, when he is admonishing the gayer end of the Town with his weekly censorial satire and ridicule, and while he is watching the enactment of new legislation for which he had so strenously pleaded,--he suddenly reappears in his earlier role of cla.s.sical scholar. On June 17, the columns of the _Journal_ advertise proposals for "A New Translation into English of the Works of LUCIAN. From the original Greek. With Notes, Historical, Critical and Explanatory. By Henry Fielding Esquire; and the Rev. Mr William Young." To which notice there is added, a few days later, the a.s.surance that "Everything which hath the least Tendency to the Indecent will be omitted in this Translation." The most delightful, perhaps, of all the leading articles in the _Covent Garden Journal_ is that in which the merits of this "Father of True Humour" are delineated. The facetious wit, the "attic Elegance of Diction," the poignant satire, the virtues and abilities of Lucian are here so persuasively presented that scarce a reader but surely would hasten, as he laid his paper down, to Mr Fielding"s or Mr Young"s house, or to Millar in the Strand or Dodsley in Pall Mall, where orders (with a guinea to be paid on booking the same) were received. And this essay is also memorable for the express declaration therein contained that Fielding had "formed his stile" upon that of Lucian; and, again, as betraying a note of disappointment, an acknowledgment that worldly fortune had indeed treated him somewhat harshly, such as Fielding"s sanguine courage very seldom permits him to utter. The concluding words, written on his own behalf and on that of Mr Young, are words of gentle protest to the public for their lack of support to "two gentlemen who have hitherto in their several capacities endeavoured to be serviceable to them without deriving any great Emolument to themselves from their Labours." And when he tells us how that "glory of human Nature, Marcus Aurelius" employed Lucian "in a very considerable Post in the Government," since that great emperor "did not, it seems, think, that a Man of Humour was below his Notice or unfit for Business of the gravest Kind," we cannot but remember that the business on which the Government of George II. thought fit to employ the inimitable genius of Henry Fielding was that of a Bow Street magistrate.
The onerous drudgery of that business, or else lack of response from a public deaf to its own interests, seems to have brought to nothing the project of this translation; and so English literature is the poorer for the loss of the works of the "Father of Humour" translated by the incomparable pen of the "Father of the English Novel."[6]
Four months after the publication of the proposals for _Lucian_, Fielding took formal leave of the readers of his _Covent Garden Journal_, telling them that he no longer had "Inclination or Leisure," to carry on the paper. His brief farewell words contain an a.s.surance very like that solemnly made, we may remember, five years before the publication of _Tom Jones_. At present, he declares, he has "No intention to hold any further correspondence with the gayer Muses"; just as eight years before he had announced that henceforth the "infamous" Nine should have none of his company. To this declaration is added a protest against the injustice of attributing abuse to a writer who "never yet was, nor ever shall be the author of any, unless to Persons who are or ought to be infamous." From the tenor of this parting speech it is clear that Fielding was, at the time, feeling keenly the imputation, flung by some of his contemporaries, of producing "scandalous Writings"; unmindful for the moment of his own calmer and wiser utterance, when he declared that men who engage in an heroic attempt to cleanse their age will undoubtedly find some of the dirt thereof sticking to their coats. "As he disdained all littleness of spirit, where ever he met with it in his dealings with the world, his indignation was apt to rise," says his contemporary Murphy; and we know from earlier protests how cruelly Fielding suffered from the attribution to his pen of writings utterly alien to his character. "... really," he cries, in the last words of the _Journal_, "it is hard to hear that scandalous Writings have been charged on me for that very Reason which ought to have proved the Contrary namely because they have been Scandalous."
The year 1752 closes with the birth of another daughter, born presumably in the house in Bow Street, as her baptism under the name of Louisa is entered in the registers of St Paul"s, Covent Garden.
The curtain that, in Fielding"s case, hangs so closely over all the pleasant intimate details of life, lifts once or twice during this year of incessant activity, and discloses just those warmhearted acts of kindness that help us to think of Harry Fielding with an affection almost as warm and personal as that we keep for d.i.c.k Steele or Oliver Goldsmith.
Fielding, we know, had "no other use for money" than to help those even less fortunate than himself; and several incidents of this year show how he turned his opportunities, both as journalist and magistrate, to like generous uses. Thus there is the story of how, one day in March, "A poor girl who had come from Wapping to see the new entertainment at Covent Garden Theatre had her pocket cut off in the crowd before the doors were opened. Tho" she knew not the Pickpocket she came immediately to lay her complaint before the Justice and with many tears lamented not the loss of her Money, but of her Entertainment. At last, having obtained a sufficient Pa.s.sport to the Gallery she departed with great satisfaction, and contented with the loss of fourteen shillings, though she declared she had not much more in the world." [7] Another day, or night rather, it is a poor troup of amateur players who had good reason to be grateful to the kindly Justice:--"last Monday night an Information was given to Henry Fielding Esquire: that a set of Barber"s apprentices, Journeymen Staymakers, Maidservants &c. had taken a large room at the Black House in the Strand, to act the Tragedy of the Orphan; the Price of Admittance One shilling. About eight o"clock the said Justice issued his Warrant, directed to Mr Welch, High Constable, who apprehended the said Actors and brought them before the said Justice, who out of compa.s.sion to their Youth only bound them over to their good behaviour. They were all conducted through the streets in their Tragedy Dresses, to the no small diversion of the Populace." [8] And in May both the ample energies and scanty purse of Justice Fielding were occupied in collecting a subscription for a young baker and his wife and child, who, by a disastrous fire, were suddenly plunged into dest.i.tution. For these poor people Fielding obtained no less a sum than 57, within a fortnight of his announcement of their distress in the columns of the _Journal_. The list of subscribers, published on May 16, shows a guinea against his own name, and a like sum, it may be noted, from the wealthy Lyttelton.
The splendour of Fielding"s genius has shone, as Gibbon foretold, throughout the world. His indefatigable labours in cleansing England from some of the evils that then oppressed her deserve to be remembered, if not by all the world, at least by the citizens of that country which, in the decline of "health and life," he yet strove so eagerly to benefit.
[1] A dramatic satire, advertised in March at Covent Garden Theatre and written (as stated by Dibdin, _History of the Stage_. Vol. v. p. 156), by the actor Macklin, bore for sub-t.i.tle _Pasquin turned Drawcansir, Censor of Great Britain_. The name, and the further details of the advertis.e.m.e.nt, recall Fielding"s early success with his political _Pasquin_: but all further trace of this "Satire" seems lost. See Appendix C.
[2] _A faithful Narrative..._. By Drawcansir.... Alexander. 1752.
[3] 25. G II. cap 36.
[4] All trace seems now lost of the actual part Fielding may have taken in the drafting of this Act.
[5] 25. G. II. c. 37.