In 1744, when Richardson had written only one book, and Fielding had published only two, before Tom Jones or Clarissa Harlowe had seen the light of day, Sarah Fielding published David Simple, under the title of The Adventures of David Simple, containing an account of his travels through the cities of London and Westminster in the search of a real friend, by a Lady. The author commenced the story as a satire on society. For a long time David's search is unsuccessful. Although he changed his lodgings every week, he could hear of no one who could be trusted. Many, to be sure, dropped hints of their own excellence, and the pity that they had to live with inferior neighbours. Among these was Mr. Spatter, who introduced him to Mr. Varnish. The former saw the faults of people through a magnifying glass; while the latter, when he mentioned a person's failings, added, "He was sure they had some good in them." But David soon learned that Mr. Varnish was no readier to assist a friend in need than the fault-finding Mr. Spatter.
Like her brother Henry, Sarah Fielding is often sarcastic. In one of the chapters she leaves David to his sufferings, "lest it should be thought," she added, "I am so ignorant of the world as not to know the proper time of forsaking people." But the pessimistic vein of the first volume changes to a more optimistic tone in the second. David, in his search for one friend, finds three. Fortunately these consist of a brother and sister and a lady in love with the brother. Even at this early time, an author had no doubts as to how a novel should end. The heading of the last chapter in the book informs us that it contains two weddings, "and consequently the Conclusion of the Book."
In its construction, the plot is similar to that of the other novels of the period. David has plenty of time at his disposal, and listens with more patience than the reader to the detailed history of all the people he meets, and often begs a casual acquaintance to favour him with the story of his life.
But Sarah Fielding's chief charm to her women readers is the feminine view of her times. In David Simple we have the pleasure of travelling through England, but with a woman as our guide. As Harry Fielding travelled between Bath and London, the fair reader wonders what he reported to Mrs. Fielding of what he had seen and heard. Surely at these various inns there must have been some by-play of real affection, some act of modest kindness, some incident of delicate humour. Did he regale Mrs. Fielding with the scenes he has described for his readers? Probably when she asked him if anything had happened en route, he merely yawned and replied, "Oh, nothing worth while." He had too much reverence for his wife to repeat these low scenes to her, and we suspect he had eyes for no others. What would Addison or Steele have seen in the same place?
Sarah Fielding also takes her characters on a stage-coach journey, but here we sit beside the fair heroine, an intelligent lady, and gaze at the men who sit opposite her. There is the Butterfly with his hair pinned up in blue papers, wearing a laced waistcoat, and humming an Italian air. He admires nothing but the ladies, and offered some little familiarity to our heroine, which she repulsed; upon this he paid her the greatest respect imaginable, being convinced, as she would not suffer any intimacy from him, she must be one of the most virtuous women that had ever been born. There is the Atheist, who being alone with her for a few moments makes love to her in an insinuating manner, and tries to prove to her that pleasure is the only thing to be sought in life, and assures her that she may follow her inclinations without a crime, "while she knew that nothing could so much oppose her gratifying him, as her pleasing herself." Then there is the Clergyman who makes honourable love to her, but by doing so puts an end to the friendship which she had hoped might be between them; until at the end of the journey, "she almost made a resolution never to speak to a man again, beginning to think it impossible for a man to be civil to a woman, unless he had some designs upon her."
Whether or not women have ever portrayed the masculine sex truthfully is an open question. But a gentleman mellowed and softened in the light of ladies' smiles is quite a different creature from the same gentleman when seen among the sterner members of his own sex, and there are certain phases of men's characters portrayed in the novels of women which Fielding, Scott, and Thackeray seem never to have seen.
Miss Fielding descants upon many familiar scenes in a manner that would have made her a valuable contributor to the Tatler or Spectator. All kinds of human nature interested her. There is the man who advises David as a friend to buy a certain stock which he himself is secretly trying to sell because he knows it has decreased in value, thus showing that money transactions in London in the reigns of the Georges differed little from money transactions on the Stock Exchange to-day. In some respects, however, society has improved since the days of Sarah Fielding. She describes the gentlemen of social prominence who tumble up to the carriages of ladies who are driving through Covent Garden in the morning, and present them with cabbages or other vegetables which they have picked up from the stalls, too intoxicated to know that their conduct is ridiculous. There are the crowds at the theatres who show their displeasure with a playwright by making so much noise that his play cannot be heard on its first night and so is condemned. Other writers of the period complain of having received this kind of treatment at the hands of the gentlemen mob. And then we are introduced to a scene in the fashionable West End which is a familiar one to-day, where the ladies of quality have their whist assemblies and spend all the morning visiting each other and discussing how the cards were played the previous evening and why certain tricks were lost.
We recognise the fact, however, that Miss Fielding's knowledge of life was but slight. She writes from the standpoint of a spectator, not like her brother as one who had been a part of it. She was one of that group of gentlewomen who gathered around Richardson and heard him read Clarissa, or discussed life and books with him at the breakfast table in the summer-house at North End, Hammersmith. Life was not lived there, but philosophy often sat at the board, and there was fine penetration into the characters and manners of men. Richardson transferred to Miss Fielding the compliment which Dr. Johnson had bestowed upon him, and it was not undeserved by the author of David Simple:
"What a knowledge of the human heart! Well might a critical judge of writing say, as he did to me, that your late brother's knowledge of it was not (fine writer as he was) comparable to yours. His was but as the knowledge of the outside of a clock-work machine, while yours was that of all the finer springs and movements of the inside."