"The Attempt, indeed, is such, that the Want of Success can scarce be called a Disappointment, tho' I shall have lost much Time, and misemployed much Pains; and what is above all, shall miss the Pleasure of thinking that in the Decline of my Health and Life, I have conferred a great and lasting Benefit on my Country."
In words still more resigned and dignified, he concludes the book:—
His enemies, he says, will no doubt "discover, that instead of intending a Provision for the Poor, I have been carving out one for myself, [Footnote: Presumably as Governor of the proposed County-house.] and have very cunningly projected to build myself a fine House at the Expence (sic) of the Public. This would be to act in direct Opposition to the Advice of my above Master [i.e. Horace]; it would be indeed
Struere domos immemor sepulchri.
Those who do not know me, may believe this; but those who do, will hardly be so deceived by that Chearfulness which was always natural to me; and which, I thank God, my Conscience doth not reprove me for, to imagine that I am not sensible of my declining Constitution…. Ambition or Avarice can no longer raise a Hope, or dictate any Scheme to me, who have no further Design than to pass my short Remainder of Life in some Degree of Ease, and barely to preserve my Family from being the Objects of any such Laws as I have here proposed."
With the exception of the above, and kindred passages quoted from the Prefaces to the Miscellanies and the Plays, the preceding pages, as the reader has no doubt observed, contain little of a purely autobiographical character. Moreover, the anecdotes related of Fielding by Murphy and others have not always been of such a nature as to inspire implicit confidence in their accuracy, while of the very few letters that have been referred to, none have any of those intimate and familiar touches which reveal the individuality of the writer. But from the middle of 1753 up to a short time before his death, Fielding has himself related the story of his life, in one of the most unfeigned and touching little tracts in our own or any other literature. The only thing which, at the moment, suggests itself for comparison with the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon is the letter and dedication which Fielding's predecessor, Cervantes, prefixes to his last romance of Persiles and Sigismunda. In each case the words are animated by the same uncomplaining kindliness—the same gallant and indomitable spirit; in each case the writer is a dying man. Cervantes survived the date of his letter to the Conde de Lemos but three days; and the Journal, says Fielding's editor (probably his brother John), was "finished almost at the same period with life." It was written, from its author's account, in those moments of the voyage when, his womankind being sea-sick, and the crew wholly absorbed in working the ship, he was thrown upon his own resources, and compelled to employ his pen to while away the time. The Preface, and perhaps the Introduction, were added after his arrival at Lisbon, in the brief period before his death. The former is a semi- humorous apology for voyage-writing; the latter gives an account of the circumstances which led to this, his last expedition in search of health.
At the beginning of August 1753, Fielding tells us, having taken the Duke of Portland's medicine [Footnote: A popular eighteenth-century gout-powder, but as old as Galen. The receipt for it is given in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxiii., 579.] for near a year, "the effects of which had been the carrying off the symptoms of a lingering imperfect gout," Mr. Ranby, the King's Sergeant-Surgeon [Footnote: Mr. Ranby was also the friend of Hogarth, who etched his house at Chiswick.] (to whom complimentary reference had been made in the Man of the Hill's story in Tom Jones), with other able physicians, advised him "to go immediately to Bath." He accordingly engaged lodgings, and prepared to leave town forthwith. While he was making ready for his departure, and was "almost fatigued to death with several long examinations, relating to five different murders, all committed within the space of a week, by different gangs of street robbers," he received a message from the Duke of Newcastle, afterwards Premier, through that Mr. Carrington whom Walpole calls "the cleverest of all ministerial terriers," requesting his attendance in Lincoln's-Inn Fields (Newcastle House). Being lame, and greatly over-taxed, Fielding excused himself. But the Duke sent Mr. Carrington again next day, and Fielding with great difficulty obeyed the summons. After waiting some three hours in the antechamber (no unusual feature, as Lord Chesterfield informs us, of the Newcastle audiences), a gentleman was deputed to consult him as to the devising of a plan for putting an immediate end to the murders and robberies which had become so common. This, although the visit cost him "a severe cold," Fielding at once undertook. A proposal was speedily drawn out and submitted to the Privy Council. Its essential features were the employment of a known informer, and the provision of funds for that purpose.
By the time this scheme was finally approved, Fielding's disorder had "turned to a deep jaundice," in which case the Bath waters were generally regarded as "almost infallible." But his eager desire to break up "this gang of villains and cut-throats" delayed him in London; and a day or two after he had received a portion of the stipulated grant, (which portion, it seems, took several weeks in arriving), the whole body were entirely dispersed,—"seven of them were in actual custody, and the rest driven, some out of town, and others out of the kingdom." In examining them, however, and in taking depositions, which often occupied whole days and sometimes nights, although he had the satisfaction of knowing that during the dark months of November and December the metropolis enjoyed complete immunity from murder and robbery, his own health was "reduced to the last extremity."
"Mine (he says) was now no longer what is called a Bath case," nor, if it had been, could his strength have sustained the "intolerable fatigue" of the journey thither. He accordingly gave up his Bath lodgings, which he had hitherto retained, and went into the country "in a very weak and deplorable condition." He was suffering from jaundice, dropsy, and asthma, under which combination of diseases his body was "so entirely emaciated, that it had lost all its muscular flesh." He had begun with reason "to look on his case as desperate," and might fairly have regarded himself as voluntarily sacrificed to the good of the public. But he is far too honest to assign his action to philanthropy alone. His chief object (he owns) had been, if possible, to secure some provision for his family in the event of his death. Not being a "trading justice,"—that is, a justice who took bribes from suitors, like Justice Thrasher in Amelia, or Justice Squeez'um in the Coffee House Politician,—his post at Bow Street had scarcely been a lucrative one. "By composing, instead of inflaming, the quarrels of porters and beggars (which I blush when I say hath not been universally practised) and by refusing to take a shilling from a man who most undoubtedly would not have had another left, I had reduced an income of about L500 a year of the dirtiest money upon earth to little more than L300, a considerable proportion of which remained with my clerk." Besides the residue of his justice's fees, he had also, he informs us, a yearly pension from the Government, "out of the public service-money," but the amount is not stated. The rest of his means, as far as can be ascertained, were derived from his literary labours. To a man of his lavish disposition, and with the claims of a family upon him, this could scarcely have been a competence; and if, as appears not very clearly from a note in the Journal, he now resigned his office to his half-brother, who had long been his assistant, his private affairs at the beginning of the winter of 1753-54 must, as he says, have "had but a gloomy aspect." In the event of his death his wife and children could have no hope except from some acknowledgment by the Government of his past services.
Meanwhile his diseases were slowly gaining ground. The terrible winter of 1753-54, which, from the weather record in the Gentleman's, seems, with small intermission, to have been prolonged far into April, was especially trying to asthmatic patients, and consequently wholly against him. In February he returned to town, and put himself under the care of the notorious Dr. Joshua Ward of Pall Mall, by whom he was treated and tapped for dropsy. [Footnote: Ward appears in Hogarth's Consultation of Physicians, 1736, and in Pope—"Ward try'd on Puppies, and the Poor, his Drop." He was a quack, but must have possessed considerable ability. Bolingbroke wished Pope to consult him in 1744; and he attended George II. There is an account of him in Nichols's Genuine Works of Hogarth, i. 89.] He was at his worst, he says, "on that memorable day when the public lost Mr. Pelham (March 6th);" but from this time, he began, under Ward's medicines, to acquire "some little degree of strength," although his dropsy increased. With May came the long-delayed spring, and he moved to Fordhook, [Footnote: It lay on the Uxbridge Road, a little beyond Acton, and nearly opposite the subsequent site of the Ealing Common Station of the Metropolitan District Railway. The spot is now occupied by "commodious villas.">[ a "little house" belonging to him at Ealing, the air of which place then enjoyed a considerable reputation, being reckoned the best in Middlesex, "and far superior to that of Kensington Gravel-Pits." Here a re-perusal of Bishop Berkeley's Siris, which had been recalled to his memory by Mrs. Charlotte Lennox, "the inimitable author of the Female Quixote," set him drinking tar-water with apparent good effect, except as far as his chief ailment was concerned. The applications of the trocar became more frequent: the summer, if summer it could be called, was "mouldering away;" and winter, with all its danger to an invalid, was drawing on apace. Nothing seemed hopeful but removal to a warmer climate. Aix in Provence was at first thought of, but the idea was abandoned on account of the difficulties of the journey. Lisbon, where Doddridge had died three years before, was then chosen; a passage in a vessel trading to the port was engaged for the sick man, his wife, daughter, and two servants; and after some delays they started. At this point the actual Journal begins with a well-remembered entry:—