A second edition of the Miscellanies appeared in the same year as the first, namely in 1743. From this date until the publication of Tom Jones in 1749, Fielding produced no work of signal importance, and his personal history for the next few years is exceedingly obscure. We are inclined to suspect that this must have been the most trying period of his career. His health was shattered, and he had become a martyr to gout, which seriously interfered with the active practice of his profession. Again, "about this time," says Murphy vaguely, after speaking of the Wedding Day, he lost his first wife. That she was alive in the winter of 1742-3 is clear, for, in the Preface to the Miscellanies, he describes himself as being then laid up, "with a favourite Child dying in one Bed, and my Wife in a Condition very little better, on another, attended with other Circumstances, which served as very proper Decorations to such a Scene,"—by which Mr. Keightley no doubt rightly supposes him to refer to writs and bailiffs. It must also be assumed that Mrs. Fielding was alive when the Preface was written, since, in apologising for an apparent delay in publishing the book, he says the "real Reason" was "the dangerous Illness of one from whom I draw [the italics are ours] all the solid Comfort of my Life." There is another unmistakable reference to her in one of the minor papers in the first volume, viz. that Of the Remedy of Affliction for the Loss of our Friends. "I remember the most excellent of Women, and tenderest of Mothers, when, after a painful and dangerous Delivery, she was told she had a Daughter, answering; Good God! have I produced a Creature who is to undergo what I have suffered! Some Years afterwards, I heard the same Woman, on the Death of that very Child, then one of the loveliest Creatures ever seen, comforting herself with reflecting, that her Child could never know what it was to feel such a Loss as she then lamented." Were it not for the passages already quoted from the Preface, it might almost be concluded from the tone of the foregoing quotation and the final words of the paper, which refer to our meeting with those we have lost in Heaven, that Mrs. Fielding was already dead. But the use of the word "draw" in the Preface affords distinct evidence to the contrary. It is therefore most probable that she died in the latter part of 1743, having been long in a declining state of health. For a time her husband was inconsolable. "The fortitude of mind," says Murphy, "with which he met all the other calamities of life, deserted him on this most trying occasion." His grief was so vehement "that his friends began to think him in danger of losing his reason."
That Fielding had depicted his first wife in Sophia Western has already been pointed out, and we have the authority of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Richardson for saying that she was afterwards reproduced in Amelia. "Amelia," says the latter, in a letter to Mrs. Donnellan, "even to her noselessness, is again his first wife." Some of her traits, too, are to be detected in the Mrs. Wilson of Joseph Andrews. But, beyond these indications, we hear little about her. Almost all that is definitely known is contained in a passage of the admirable Introductory Anecdotes contributed by Lady Louisa Stuart in 1837 to Lord Wharncliffe's edition of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters and Works. This account was based upon the recollections of Lady Bute, Lady Mary's daughter.
"Only those persons (says Lady Stuart) are mentioned here of whom Lady Bute could speak from her own recollection or her mother's report. Both had made her well informed of every particular that concerned her relation Henry Fielding; nor was she a 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, or to her beauty, although this had suffered a little from the accident related in the novel,—a frightful overturn, which destroyed the gristle of her nose. [Footnote: That any one could have remained lovely after such a catastrophe is difficult to believe. But probably Lady Bute (or Lady Stuart) exaggerated its effects; for—to say nothing of the fact that, throughout the novel, Amelia's beauty is continually commended—in the delightfully feminine description which is given of her by Mrs. James in Book xi. chap. i., pp. 114-15 of the first edition of 1752, although she is literally pulled to pieces, there is no reference whatever to her nose, which may be taken as proof positive that it was not an assailable feature. Moreover, in the book as we now have it, Fielding, obviously in deference to contemporary criticism, inserted the following specific passages:—"She was, indeed, a most charming woman; and I know not whether the little scar on her nose did not rather add to, than diminish her beauty" (Book iv. chap, vii.); and in Mrs. James's portrait:—"Then her nose, as well proportioned as it is, has a visible scar on one side." No previous biographer seems to have thought it necessary to make any mention of these statements, while Johnson's speech about "That vile broken nose, never cured," and Richardson's coarsely-malignant utterance to Mrs. Donnellan, are everywhere industriously remembered and repeated.] He loved her passionately, and she returned his affection; yet led no happy life, for they were almost always miserably poor, and seldom in a state of quiet and safety. All the world knows what was his imprudence; if ever he possessed a score of pounds, nothing could keep him from lavishing it idly, or make him think of tomorrow. Sometimes they were living in decent lodgings with tolerable comfort; sometimes in a wretched garret without necessaries; not to speak of the spunging- houses and hiding-places where he was occasionally to be found. His elastic gaiety of spirit carried him through it all; but, meanwhile, care and anxiety were preying upon her more delicate mind, and undermining her constitution. She gradually declined, caught a fever, and died in his arms."
As usual, Mr. Keightley has done his best to test this statement to the utmost. Part of his examination may be neglected, because it is based upon the misconception that Lord Wharncliffe, Lady Mary's greatgrandson, and not Lady Stuart, her granddaughter, was the writer of the foregoing account. But as a set-off to the extreme destitution alleged, Mr. Keightley very justly observes that Mrs. Fielding must for some time have had a maid, since it was a maid who had been devotedly attached to her whom Fielding subsequently married. He also argues that "living in a garret and skulking in out o' the way retreats," are incompatible with studying law and practising as a barrister. Making every allowance, however, for the somewhat exaggerated way in which those of high rank often speak of the distresses of their less opulent kinsfolk, it is probable that Fielding's married life was one of continual shifts and privations. Such a state of things is completely in accordance with his profuse nature [Footnote: The passage as to his imprudence is, oddly enough, omitted from Mr. Keightley's quotation.] and his precarious means. Of his family by the first Mrs. Fielding no very material particulars have been preserved. Writing, in November 1745, in the True Patriot, he speaks of having a son and a daughter, but no son by his first wife seems to have survived him. The late Colonel Chester found the burial of a "James Fielding, son of Henry Fielding," recorded under date of 19th February 1736, in the register of St. Giles in the Fields; but it is by no means certain that this entry refers to the novelist. A daughter, Harriet or Harriot, certainly did survive him, for she is mentioned in the Voyage to Lisbon as being of the party who accompanied him. Another daughter, as already stated, probably died in the winter of 1742-3; and the Journey from this World to the Next contains the touching reference to this or another child, of which Dickens writes so warmly in one of his letters. "I presently," says Fielding, speaking of his entrance into Elysium, "met a little Daughter, whom I had lost several Years before. Good Gods! what Words can describe the Raptures, the melting passionate Tenderness, with which we kiss'd each other, continuing in our Embrace, with the most extatic Joy, a Space, which if Time had been measured here as on Earth, could not have been less than half a Year."
From the death of Mrs. Fielding until the publication of the True Patriot in 1745 another comparative blank ensues in Fielding's history; and it can only be filled by the assumption that he was still endeavouring to follow his profession as a barrister. His literary work seems to have been confined to a Preface to the second edition of his sister's novel of David Simple, which appeared in 1744. This, while rendering fraternal justice to that now forgotten book, is memorable for some personal utterances on Fielding's part. In denying the authorship of David Simple, which had been attributed to him, he takes occasion to appeal against the injustice of referring anonymous works to his pen, in the face of his distinct engagement in the Preface to the Miscellanies, that he would thenceforth write nothing except over his own signature; and he complains that such a course has a tendency to injure him in a profession to which "he has applied with so arduous and intent a diligence, that he has had no leisure, if he had inclination, to compose anything of this kind (i.e. David Simple)." At the same time, he formally withdraws his promise, since it has in no wise exempted him from the scandal of putting forth anonymous work. From other passages in this "Preface," it may be gathered the immediate cause of irritation was the assignment to his pen of "that infamous paultry libel" the Causidicade, a satire directed at the law in general, and some of the subscribers to the Miscellanies in particular. "This," he says, "accused me not only of being a bad writer, and a bad man, but with downright idiotism, in flying in the face of the greatest men of my profession." It may easily be conceived that such a report must be unfavourable to a struggling barrister, and Fielding's anxiety on this head is a strong proof that he was still hoping to succeed at the Bar. To a subsequent collection of Familiar Letters between the Principal Characters in David Simple and some others, he supplied another preface three years later, together with five little-known epistles which, nevertheless, are not without evidence of his characteristic touch.
A life of ups and downs like Fielding's is seldom remarkable for its consistency. It is therefore not surprising to find that, despite his desire in 1744 to refrain from writing, he was again writing in 1745. The landing of Charles Edward attracted him once more into the ranks of journalism, on the side of the Government, and gave rise to the True Patriot, a weekly paper, the first number of which appeared in November. This, having come to an end with the Rebellion, was succeeded in December 1747 by the Jacobite's Journal, supposed to emanate from "John Trott-Plaid, Esq.," and intended to push the discomfiture of Jacobite sentiment still further. It is needless to discuss these mainly political efforts at any length. They are said to have been highly approved by those in power: it is certain that they earned for their author the stigma of "pension'd scribbler." Both are now very rare; and in Murphy the former is represented by twenty-four numbers, the latter by two only. The True Patriot contains a dream of London abandoned to the rebels, which is admirably graphic; and there is also a prophetic chronicle of events for 1746, in which the same idea is treated in a lighter and more satirical vein. But perhaps the most interesting feature is the reappearance of Parson Adams, who addresses a couple of letters to the same periodical—one on the rising generally, and the other on the "young England" of the day, as exemplified in a very offensive specimen he had recently encountered at Mr. Wilson's. Other minor points of interest in connection with the Jacobite's Journal, are the tradition associating Hogarth with the rude woodcut headpiece (a Scotch man and woman on an ass led by a monk) which surmounted its earlier numbers, and the genial welcome given in No. 5, perhaps not without some touch of contrition, to the two first volumes, then just published, of Richardson's Clarissa. The pen is the pen of an imaginary "correspondent," but the words are unmistakably Fielding's:—
"When I tell you I have lately received this Pleasure [i.e. of reading a new master-piece], you will not want me to inform you that I owe it to the Author of CLARISSA. Such Simplicity, such Manners, such deep Penetration into Nature; such Power to raise and alarm the Passions, few Writers, either ancient or modern, have been possessed of. My Affections are so strongly engaged, and my Fears are so raised, by what I have already read, that I cannot express my Eagerness to see the rest. Sure this Mr. Richardson is Master of all that Art which Horace compares to Witchcraft
—Pectus inaniter angit,
Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet
Ut Magus.—"
Between the discontinuance of the True Patriot and the establishment of its successor occurred an event, the precise date of which has been hitherto unknown, namely, Fielding's second marriage. The account given of this by Lady Louisa Stuart is as follows:—
"His [Fielding's] biographers seem to have been shy of disclosing that after the death of this charming woman [his first wife] he married her maid. And yet the act was not so discreditable to his character as it may sound. The maid had few personal charms, but was an excellent creature, devotedly attached to her mistress, and almost broken-hearted for her loss. In the first agonies of his own grief, which approached to frenzy, he found no relief but from weeping along with her; nor solace, when a degree calmer, but in talking to her of the angel they mutually regretted. This made her his habitual confidential associate, and in process of time he began to think he could not give his children a tenderer mother, or secure for himself a more faithful housekeeper and nurse. At least this was what he told his friends; and it is certain that her conduct as his wife confirmed it, and fully justified his good opinion."