Henry Fielding: a Memoir Part 10

[1] These are in the Burney Collection, and are inscribed "These papers are by the celebrated Henry Fielding Esqre."

[2] See the _Gentleman's Magazine_. Dec. 1747.

[3] _A Free Comment on the Late Mr. W-G-N's Apology ... By a Lady ..._ 1748.

[4] _The Patriot a.n.a.lized_. 1748.

[5] _True Patriot No. 14_.

[6] _True Patriot_. No. 29. May 20, 1746.

[7] R. Cobbett. _Memorials of Twickenham_, 1872.

[8] The _Journal's_ epitaph was promptly written by a scurrilous opponent in lines showing that the prominences of Fielding's profile were well-known:

Beneath this stone Lies _Trott Plaid John_ His length of chin and nose.

See the _Gentleman's Magazine_, November 1748.

CHAPTER XI

TOM JONES

"In G.o.d's Name let us speak out honestly and set the good against the bad."

No. 48 of the _Jacobite's Journal_.

The two years of Fielding's life preceding his appointment as a Bow Street magistrate (an appointment comparable only to the choice of Robert Burns as an exciseman) were marked, as we have seen, by lively pa.s.sages in the political arena, and a steady output of political journalism. Indeed, by this time, the public must have a.s.sociated swingeing denunciations of Jacobites, and glowing eulogies of the British Const.i.tution, with Harry Fielding's name; just as seven years previously he had been in their eyes the 'Champion' journalist of a brilliant Opposition; and, for ten years before that, the witty writer of a stream of popular farces and comedies.

For there is no evidence that his audacious innovation, his splendid adventure in literature, _Joseph Andrews_, really revealed the existence of a new genius in their midst to the Whigs and Tories of those factious days, to the gay frequenters of the play-house, to the barristers at Westminster Hall and on the Western Circuit. In 1748 Fielding must have been, to his many audiences, a witty and well-born man of letters who, at forty-one, had as yet achieved no towering success; a facile dramatist; and a master of slashing political invective, growing perplexingly impartial, alike in his praise and his condemnation. While, as regards outward circ.u.mstances, the struggling barrister, baffled in his professional hopes by persistent attacks of gout, was now so far enlisted, to use his own fine image, under the black banner of poverty, that even the small post and hard duties of a Bow Street magistrate were worth his acceptance. [1]

Such was Harry Fielding as the world of 1748 knew him, in the Coffee houses, the Mall, the Green-room and the Law-courts. What that world did not know was that all this dramatic, journalistic, and political action, was little more than the surface movement of a vitality far too exuberant to be contained in any one groove of hackney writing,--of an impetuous 'enthusiasm for righteousness' far too ardent to pa.s.s by any flagrant social, moral, or political abuse without inflicting some form of chastis.e.m.e.nt; and that beneath this ever active surface movement Fielding's genius was slowly maturing in that new continent of literature the borders of which he had already crossed seven years before. In the pages of _Joseph Andrews_, he had, as we know, tentatively explored that continent feeling his way along the unknown paths of this long neglected world of human nature; bringing back with him one immortal figure, that living embodiment of simple piety and scholarship, of charity and honest strength, Parson Adams; disclosing hints of discoveries, not yet perfected, among the humours and villanies, the virtues and charms, of a dozen other inhabitants of his _terra incognita_. But there is no sign that the greatness of his discovery, the splendour of his addition to the empire of English literature, was in the least apprehended during the seven years following the appearance of _Joseph Andrews_. Only Fielding himself was conscious that he had created a kind of writing "hitherto unattempted in our language."

And, having crossed the borders of this new continent, he seems, after his first survey, to have deliberately immersed himself in one portion, and that the blackest, of his re-discovered world. For _Jonathan Wild_, with its disclosure of the active spirit of 'diabolism,' of naked vice, is little else than the exploration of those darkest recesses of human nature which can be safely entered only by the sanest and healthiest of intellects. Fielding's strength was equal to his exploit; and from this, his second adventure, he brought back a picture of the deformity and folly of vice, drawn with a just and penetrating scorn unequalled, perhaps, by any English moralist. But neither of these two essays in the new field of writing had covered more than isolated or outlying portions, the first in sunlight, the second in shadow, of that vast territory. And it was not till the perfect maturity of his powers and of his experience, not till he had seen both the 'manners of many men,' and the workings of many hearts, not in a word till he had made himself master of great tracts of that human nature which had so long lain neglected, that Fielding in _Tom Jones_ disclosed himself as the creator of the English novel.

Little is known as to when the conception of _Tom Jones_ first shaped itself in his mind, of where he lived during the writing of the great Comic Epic, or of the time occupied in its completion. Appropriately for a book expressly designed "to recommend goodness and innocence" the plan of the novel was suggested, many years before its appearance, by the 'good Lord Lyttelton'; and we know, further, that the writing occupied 'some thousands of hours'; but _Tom Jones_ does not emerge into definite existence till the summer of 1748.

Legend it is true, attesting to the greatness of the achievement contained in the six little volumes, endows many localities with the fame of their origin. A well-credited contemporary writer, the Rev. Richard Graves, declared that the novelist "while he was writing his novel of Tom Jones"

lived at Tiverton (Twerton), one and a half miles from Bath, and dined daily at Prior Park the seat of his munificent and pious friend Ralph Allen. Mr Graves says that Fielding then lived in "the first house on the right hand with a spread eagle over the door." [2] Salisbury is insistent that part at least of the great novel was written at Milford House, near to that city. An anonymous old engraver a.s.serts the same honour for Fielding's Farm at East Stour, an a.s.sertion certainly not confirmed by the newly found doc.u.ments concerning Fielding's sale of property at Stour in 1738. Twickenham claims that the book was wholly composed in the house in Back Lane. And to an ancient building at Tintern Parva in the Wye Valley, said to have once been the lodging of the Abbot of Tintern, was also a.s.signed the reputation of being the birthplace of the English novel. If the latter tradition were true, the fact that it was in the Harlequin chamber of the Abbots of Glas...o...b..ry that Henry Fielding was born, becomes strangely matched by the birth, some forty years later, of his masterpiece, in the lodging of the Abbot of Tintern. The one point of real interest in all these traditions is the fact that the fame of _Tom Jones_ has been sufficient to create a widespread popular legend. The truth probably is that the book was written in the many shifting scenes of Fielding's life during these years; now at Bath whither his gout and the generous hospitality of Ralph Allen would take him; now in Salisbury, the home of his boyhood, and the scene of his courtship with the lovely original of Sophia Western; possibly in his own county of Somerset; and most probably both at Twickenham, and in London.

From these various legends it is pleasant to be able to disentangle one clear picture of the making of _Tom Jones_. Before the ma.n.u.script was placed in the printers' hands Fielding submitted it to the opinion both of the elder Pitt, and of the estimable and pious Lyttelton; and the account of this memorable meeting cannot be better given than in the words of a descendant of the hostess on that occasion, the Rev. George Miller, great-grandson of that Sanderson Miller of Radway, Warwickshire, who numbered many men of note among his acquaintance, and with whom Fielding was on terms of intimate friendship. [3] Writing to the present writer, in 1907, Mr. Miller says: "Lord Chatham and Lord Lyttleton came to Radway to visit my ancestor, when Lord Chatham planted three trees to commemorate the visit, and a stone urn was placed between them. Fielding was also of the party and read 'Tom Jones' in ma.n.u.script after dinner for the opinion of his hearers before publishing it. My father told me this often and he had the account from his Grandmother who survived her husband several years and who was the hostess on the occasion." Unhappily no record exists of the comments of one of the greatest of English statesmen when listening to this reading, in ma.n.u.script, of indubitably one of the greatest of English novels.

The vagueness which hangs over the places in which _Tom Jones_ was written, the certainty that in all of them poverty was constantly present, is in perfect accord with the power of detachment manifested in this book from circ.u.mstances that would surely have tinged, if not over-whelmed, a weaker genius. Sickness and poverty are stern sponsors; but neither were suffered to leave more than two traces on the pages destined to outlive so greatly the harsh circ.u.mstances in which they had birth. There is the frank acknowledgement of the writer's dependence on Lyttelton's n.o.ble generosity, without which the book had never, Fielding says, been completed, since "I partly owe to you my Existence during great Part of the Time which I have employed in composing it." And a touching betrayal occurs of his anxiety for the future provision of the "prattling babes, whose innocent play hath often been interrupted by my labours." Fielding was sensitively anxious for his wife and children; but, for himself, living as he did with visions such as that of the _Invocation_ introducing Book xiii of _Tom Jones_, the precise situation of his "little Parlour,"

or the poorness of its furniture, cannot have appeared very material.

"Come bright Love of Fame," he cries "... fill my ravished Fancy with the Hopes of charming Ages yet to come... Do thou teach me not only to foresee, but to enjoy, nay, even to feed on future Praise. Comfort me by a solemn a.s.surance, that when the little Parlour in which I sit at this Instant, shall be reduced to a worse furnished Box, I shall be read, with Honour, by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see."

This capacity of Fielding for relegating circ.u.mstance to its true level, the detached idealism that moulded his genius, are, indeed, shown once for all in the fact that the exquisite picture of virtue, the whole-hearted attack on vice, the genial humour, the sunny portraits of humanity, the splendid cheerfulness of _Tom Jones_, that 'Epic of Youth,' came from a man in middle age, immersed in disheartening struggles, and fighting recurrent ill health. Superficial critics have called Fielding a realist because his figures are so full-blooded and alive that we feel we have met them but yesterday in the street; to eyes so shortsighted life itself must seem merely realistic. As none but an idealist could have conceived Parson Adams, so the creator of Sophia again announced himself an idealist in the Dedication of _Tom Jones_. Here, in language of pure symbolism, he contends that the ideal virtues such as goodness and innocence, may most effectively be presented to men in a figure, for "an Example is a Kind of Picture, in which Virtue becomes as it were an Object of Sight, and strikes us with an Idea of that Loveliness, which _Plato_ a.s.serts there is in her naked Charms." [4] To the man who could write thus, and, who, in later pages of his great 'Epic,' could humbly desire of Genius "do thou kindly take me by the Hand, and lead me through all the Mazes, the winding Labyrinth of Nature. Initiate me into all those Mysteries which profane Eyes never beheld,"--to this man the material surroundings of life must have seemed of little greater import than the fittings of that narrow box to the occupation of which he looked forward with so calm a foresight.

Indeed he himself acknowledges a carelessness of outward comfort on his own behalf. "Come," he cries, to the spirit of mercenary success, "Thou jolly Substance, with thy shining Face, ... hold forth thy tempting Rewards; thy shining c.h.i.n.king Heap; thy quickly-convertible Bank-bill, big with unseen Riches; thy often-varying Stock; the warm, the comfortable House; ... Come thou, and if I am too tasteless of thy valuable Treasures, warm my Heart with the transporting Thought of conveying them to others."

His happy const.i.tution, wrote his cousin Lady Mary, "made him forget everything when he was before a venison pasty or a flask of champagne"; but behind those healthy exhilarations was, a.s.suredly, a serenity based on a clear perception of the values of life. To a man of Fielding's happy social temperament, and who was yet also initiated into mysteries and occupied in converting ideal loveliness into 'an object of sight,' such matters as duns and p.a.w.nbrokers would seem precisely fit for oblivion in venison and champagne. In the creator of Tom Jones and of Sophia the most indestructible delight in living, and the keenest discernment of the unsubstantial qualities of that delight, appear to have been admirably interwoven.

By June 11, 1748, the book was far enough advanced for the publisher, Andrew Millar, to pay 600 for it, as appears from a receipt now in the possession of Mr. Alfred Huth. [5] And it is eminently characteristic of the finances of a man who, as Lady Mary said, would have wanted money had his estates been as extensive as his imagination, that the receipt for this 600 is dated more than six months before the publication of the book. For it was not till February 28, 1749, that the _General Advertiser_ announced

This day is published, in six vols., 12 mo THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, A FOUNDLING _Mores hominum multorum vidit_.

_By_ HENRY FIELDING, _Esqre_

Henceforth Fielding ceases to be the boisterous politician, the witty dramatist; his poverty and his struggles for subsistence fall back, at his own bidding, among the accidents of life; and he stands revealed as the supreme genius, the creator of the English novel, the inheritor of that lasting fame which he had dared so confidently to invoke.

The immediate success of the book, in that eighteenth-century world into which it was launched, is attested by the notice in the _London Magazine_ of the very month of its publication. Under the heading of a "Plan of a late celebrated NOVEL," the _Magazine_ devotes its five opening pages to a summary of a book "which has given great Amus.e.m.e.nt and we hope Instruction to the polite Part of the Town." The summary is preceded by a description of _Tom Jones_ as a novel "calculated to recommend religion and virtue, to shew the bad consequences of indiscretion, and to set several kinds of vice in their most deformed and shocking light." The reviewer declares that "after one has begun to read it, it is difficult to leave off before having read the whole." And he concludes, "Thus ends this pretty novel, with a most just distribution of rewards and punishments, according to the merits of all the persons who had any considerable share in it." [6] Three months later Horace Walpole wrote, "Millar the bookseller has done very generously by him [Fielding]: finding Tom Jones, for which he had given him 600, sell so greatly, he has since given him another hundred." An admirer breaks out into rhyme, in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for August 1749,--

"let Fielding take the pen!

Life dropt her mask, and all mankind were men."

thereby antic.i.p.ating Thackeray's famous complaint that in his day no one dared "to depict to his utmost power a Man." Lady Bradshaigh, writing by a happy irony of fate to Richardson, says "as to Tom Jones I am fatigued with the name, having lately fallen into the company of several young ladies, who had each a 'Tom Jones' in some part of the world, for so they call their favourites." The gentlemen also had their Sophias, one indeed having bestowed that all-popular name on his 'Dutch mastiff puppy.' That eccentric eighteenth century philosopher, and enthusiastic Greek scholar, Lord Monboddo declared that _Tom Jones_ had more of character in it than any other work, ancient or modern, known to him, adding, "in short, I never saw anything that was so animated, and as I may say, _all alive_ with characters and manners as _the History of Tom Jones_"; a criticism that recalls Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's remark that no man enjoyed life more than did Fielding. Doubtless it was his own magnificent capacity for living that endowed the very creatures of his pen with so abundant a vitality. In her own copy Lady Mary wrote _Ne plus Ultra_.

To turn from the popular voices of the day to the comments of those capable of appraising genius, "What a master of composition Fielding was!"

exclaimed Coleridge, "Upon my word I think 'Oedipus Tyrannus,' the 'Alchemist,' and 'Tom Jones' the three most perfect plots ever planned."

To Sir Walter Scott _Tom Jones_ was "truth and human nature itself."

Gibbon described the book as "the first of ancient or modern romances"; and, as we have seen, declared that its pages would outlive the Imperial Eagle of those Hapsburgs from whom Fielding was said to be descended.

"There can be no gainsaying the sentence of this great judge," wrote Thackeray. "To have your name mentioned by Gibbon is like having it written on the dome of St Peter's. Pilgrims from all the world admire and behold it." Pilgrims from all the world have likewise admired _Tom Jones_.

Translations have appeared in French, German, [7] Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Polish and Dutch; and as for the English editions, they range from the three editions issued within the year of publication to the several n.o.ble volumes newly edited in our own day, and the sixpenny copies on our railway bookstalls. So fully has time justified the invocation to future fame sent forth from the little ill-furnished parlour of the struggling barrister.

To a.n.a.lyse the grounds for a chorus of praise ranging from the 'young ladies' of the eighteenth century to the utterances of distinguished critics, and popular authors of our own day, would be to confound literary criticism with biography. But there are some points appertaining to Fielding's great novel which cannot be here disregarded, in that they closely affect his personal character. Such are the light in which he himself regarded his masterpiece, the intention with which he wrote it, and the means which he selected to carry that intention into effect.

All these he himself very plainly sets forth in his _Dedication_ to Lyttelton and in other pa.s.sages of _Tom Jones_. As to his intention. "I declare," he says, in the _Dedication_, "that to recommend Goodness and Innocence hath been my sincere Endeavour in this History." And the means selected for this end, and for the companion object of persuading men from guilt, are as clearly stated. First as we have seen, Fielding plays the part of pure idealist, purposing to create a picture "in which virtue becomes as it were an object of sight." For such pictures we have but to think of Sophia Western, and of that final page of _Tom Jones_, than which no more charming representation of mutual affection, esteem, and well doing can be imagined. But besides this means of reaching his audience Fielding adopted, he tells us, a second method. He argues that no acquisitions of guilt can compensate a man for the loss of inward peace, for the attendant horror, anxiety, and danger, to which he subjects himself; thus endeavouring to enlist man's self-interest no less than his admiration, on the side of virtue. Again, he explains yet another method by which he essays to foil the progress of evil, viz. to show that virtue and innocence are chiefly betrayed "into the snares that deceit and villainy spread for them" by indiscretion; a moral which he has "the more industriously laboured ... since I believe it is much easier to make good Men, wise than to make bad Men good." For this purpose, he concludes, namely to show, as in a figure, the beauty of virtue, to persuade men that in following innocence and virtue they follow their own obvious interests, to arm them from the snares of villainy and deceit, "I have employed all the Wit and Humour of which I am Master in the following History; wherein I have endeavoured to laugh Mankind out of their favourite Follies and Vices."

And, conscious that wit and humour require a rein quite unneeded by the methods of the professional moralist, Fielding further a.s.serts that in these pages his laughter is worthy of the aim which he sets before him.

Here, he carefully insists, are wit and humour wholly void of offence. He a.s.sures his reader that in the whole course of the work, he will find "nothing prejudicial to the Cause of Religion and Virtue; nothing inconsistent with the strictest Rules of Decency, nor which can offend even the chastest Eye in the Perusal." As the almost incredible change from the manners of 1749 to those of the following century, and of our own day, has injuriously affected the reputation of Fielding among readers ignorant of past conditions, this protest, in striking accord with the prologue for his first play acted when he was but a lad of twenty, cannot be too emphatically recorded. And no further justification of Fielding's words need be entered than that verdict of the eighteenth century scholar and bishop of the English Church, Doctor Warburton, when he declared that "Mr. Fielding [stands] the foremost among those who have given a faithful and chaste copy of life and manners."

Such were the n.o.ble purposes to which Fielding consciously dedicated his genius in _Tom Jones_, and such was the careful restraint with which he exercised his chosen methods of wit and humour. That these purposes, executed by a supreme genius in the language and scenes of his own day, should ever have laid their author open to a charge of immorality is perhaps one of the most amazing pieces of irony in the whole history of English literature. But as this charge of moral laxity has been seriously brought against the pages of _Tom Jones_, and is perhaps not yet quite exploded, it cannot be wholly disregarded. The imputation amounts, briefly, to a too easy forgiveness for the youthful sins of Jones, and the involving that engaging youth in too deep a degradation. The answers to these charges are, firstly, that Fielding held strongly, and here exhibits, the humane and wise doctrine that a man should be judged, not by what he sometimes does, but by what he _is_. And, secondly, that as Sir Walter Scott pointed out, when dealing with this very matter, "the vices into which Jones suffers himself to fall are made the direct cause of placing him in the distressful situation which he occupies during the greater part of the narrative; while his generosity, his charity, and his amiable qualities become the means of saving him from the consequences of his folly." Fielding was not wholly concerned with the acts of a man; to him the admission of the Penitent Thief into Paradise, at the eleventh hour, could have been no stumbling block. And, further, Tom Jones not only suffers for his ill doing, but wins no heaven until he wholly purges himself from the sin which did so easily beset him.

The distinction between doing and being is very fully enunciated by Fielding himself, in the _Introduction_ to Book vii. "A single bad Act,"

he says, "no more const.i.tutes a Villain in Life, than a single bad Part on the Stage". And again, "Now we, who are admitted behind the Scenes of this great Theatre of Nature, (and no Author ought to write any Thing besides Dictionaries and Spelling-Books who hath not this Privilege) can censure the Action, without conceiving any actual Detestation of the Person, whom perhaps Nature may not have designed to act an ill Part in all her Dramas: For in this Instance, Life most exactly represents the Stage, since it is often the same Person who represents the Villain and the Heroe". Coleridge has expressed the same truth in words written in a copy of _Tom Jones_, "If I want a servant or mechanic I wish to know what he _does_--but of a Friend I must know what he _is_. And in no writer is this momentous distinction so finely brought forward as by Fielding. We do not care what Blifil does ... but Blifil _is_ a villain and we feel him to be so." [8]

It is true that, as Scott regrets the depth of degradation into which Tom Jones is suffered to fall, so Coleridge expresses a wish, "relatively to Fielding himself" that the great novelist had emphasised somewhat more the repentance of his hero: but this may be balanced by that other n.o.ble tribute to his morality, "I dare believe who consulted his heart and conscience only without adverting to _what the world_ would say could rise from the perusal of Fielding's _Tom Jones_, _Joseph Andrews_ and _Amelia_ without feeling himself the better man--at least without an intense conviction that he could not be guilty of a base act." [9] To be forced to watch the temporary degradation of a n.o.ble nature, and the miseries ensuing, is surely one of the most effective means of rousing a hatred of vice. That such an exhibition should ever have been construed into moral laxity on the part of the author, especially when the restoration of the hero's character is drawn as entirely due to his ingrained worship of innocence and virtue, is almost incredible.

In exact accordance with Fielding's character as moralist in intent, although supreme artist in execution, is the fact of the dedication of _Tom Jones_ to his life-long friend Lyttelton. George Lyttelton, statesman, scholar, and orator, was a friend of whom any man might be proud. It was said of him that he "showed the judgment of a minister, the force and wit of an orator, and the spirit of a gentleman." As theologian he wrote a treatise on _The Conversion of St. Paul_ which, a hundred years later, was described as being "still regarded as one of the subsidiary bulwarks of Christianity." As poet he won the praise of Gray for his tender and elegiac verse. Thomson sang of his "sense refined," and adds

Serene yet warm, humane yet firm his mind As little touch'd as any man's with bad;

And Pope drew his character as

"Still true to virtue and as warm as true."

It was to this devout scholar, this refined gentleman, this warm-hearted follower of virtue, that _Tom Jones_ was dedicated, nay more, to him it owed both origin and completion. "To you, Sir," Fielding writes in his _Dedication_, "it is owing that this History was ever begun. It was by your Desire that I first thought of such a Composition.... Again, Sir, without your a.s.sistance this History had never been completed.... I partly owe to you my Existence during great Part of the Time in which I have employed in composing it." And that Lyttelton cordially approved the book which owed so much to his own insight and generosity is evident from the references, in the _Dedication_, to his favourable judgment.

With the appearance of _Tom Jones_ Fielding steps into his own place among the immortals. But lofty as his genius was, his feet were firmly planted in the world which he relished so keenly. To no man could be applied more happily the motto chosen by him for his t.i.tle page, _mores hominum multorum vidit_--he saw the manners of many men. This characteristic emerges in a personal reminiscence of the novelist, at the very moment when the sheets of _Tom Jones_ were pa.s.sing through the press. The great-nephew of his intimate friend Mrs Hussey relates; "Henry Fielding was fond of colouring his pictures of life with the glowing and variegated tints of Nature, by conversing with persons of every situation and calling, as I have frequently been informed by one of my great aunts, the late Mrs Hussey, who knew him intimately. I have heard her say, that Mr Fielding never suffered his talent for sprightly conversation to mildew for a moment; and that his manners were so gentlemanly, that even with the lower cla.s.ses, with which he frequently condescended particularly to chat such as Sir Roger de Coverley's old friends, the Vauxhall water-men, they seldom outstepped the limits of propriety. My aunt ... [was] a fashionable sacque and mantua-maker, and lived in the Strand, ... One day Mr Fielding observed to Mrs Hussey, that he was then engaged in writing a novel, which he thought would be his best production; and that he intended to introduce into it the characters of all his friends. Mrs Hussey, with a smile, ventured to remark, that he must have many niches, and that surely they must already be filled. 'I a.s.sure you, my dear madam,' replied he, 'there shall be a bracket for a bust of you.' Some time after this, he informed Mrs Hussey that the work was in the press; but, immediately recollecting that he had forgotten his promise to her, went to the printer, and was time enough to insert, in vol. iii. p. 17, where he speaks of the shape of Sophia Western--'Such charms are there in affability, and so sure is it to attract the praises of all kinds of people.... It may indeed be compared to the celebrated Mrs Hussey.' To which observation he has given the following note: 'A celebrated mantua-maker in the Strand, famous for setting off the shapes of women.'" [10]

Here is yet further proof, that Fielding loved not only to see the manners of many men, but also to render them whatever service lay within his power. Never were the warmest heart and the loftiest genius more happily united than in the creator of the English novel.