"Jack. To your Honour's own Pawnbroker.
"Luckless. Ay And in thy way home call at the Cook's Shop. So, one way or other I find, my Head must always provide for my Belly."
At which moment enters the caustic, generous Witmore, belabouring the profanity, the scurrility, the immodesty, the stupidity of the age with one hand, the while he pays his friend's rent with the other; and who, incidentally, is requested by that irascible genius to kick a worthy publisher down the stairs, on the latter's refusal to give fifty shillings "no, nor fifty farthings" for his play. Once mollified by the settlement of her bill, we have the landlady playing advocate for her hapless lodger in words that sound very like the apologia of Mr Harry Fielding himself: "I have always thought, indeed, Mr Luckless had a great deal of Honesty in his Principles; any Man may be unfortunate: but I knew when he had Money I should have it...." And the good woman's reminiscence that while her lodger had money her doors were thundered at every morning between four and five by coachmen and chairmen; and her wish that that pleasant humour'd gentleman were "but a little soberer," finishes, we take it, the portrait of the Fielding of 1730. "Jack call a coach; and d'ye hear, get up behind it and attend me," cries the improvident poet, the moment his generous friend has left him; and so we are sure did young Mr Fielding put himself and his laced coat into a coach, and mount his man behind it, whenever the exigencies of duns and hunger were for a moment abated. And with as gallant a humour as that of his own Luckless did he walk afoot, when those "nine ragged jades the muses" failed to bring him a competency.
Such failure on the part of the Muses was due to no want of wooing on his part. During the six years between Fielding's first appearance as dramatic author in 1728, and his marriage in 1734, there stand no fewer than thirteen plays to his name. Of these none have won any lasting reputation; and to this period of the great novelist's life may doubtless be applied Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's description, when lamenting that her kinsman should have been "forced by necessity to publish without correction, and throw many productions into the world he would have thrown into the fire, if meat could have been got without money, and money without scribbling." Lady Mary's account moreover is reinforced by Murphy's classical periods: "Mr Fielding's case was generally the same with that of the poet described by Juvenal; with a great genius, he must have starved if he had not sold his performance to a favourite actor. Esurit, intactam Paridi, nisi vendit Agaven." A complete list of all these ephemera will be found in the bibliography at the end of this volume; here we need but notice those to which a special interest attaches. Thus, that incomparable comic actress, Kitty Clive, was cast for a part in the Lottery, a farce produced in 1731; and three years later Fielding is adapting for her, especially, the Intriguing Chambermaid. It was in these two plays, and that of the Virgin Unmasked, that the town discovered the true comic genius of Kitty Clive "the best player I ever saw," in Dr Johnson's opinion. For this discovery Fielding takes credit to himself, in the dedication addressed to Mrs Clive, which he prefixed to the Intriguing Chambermaid; and in which he finds opportunity to pay a noble tribute to the private life of that inimitable hoyden of the stage. "I cannot help reflecting" he writes, "that the Town hath one great obligation to me, who made the first discovery of your great capacity, and brought you earlier forward on the theatre, than the ignorance of some and the envy of others would have otherwise permitted.... But as great a favorite as you at present are with the audience you would be much more so were they acquainted with your private character ... did they see you, who can charm them on the stage with personating the foolish and vicious characters of your sex, acting in real life the part of the best Wife, the best Daughter, the best Sister, and the best Friend." That this splendid praise was as sincere as it was generous need not be doubted. No breath of slander, even in that slanderous age, seems ever to have dulled the reputation of the queen of comedy, and "better romp than any I ever saw in nature"--to quote Dr Johnson again,--Kitty Clive.
So few of Fielding's letters have been, to our knowledge, preserved, that the following note addressed to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and concerning the Modern Husband, a comedy produced in 1731 or 1732, must here be given, though containing little beyond the fact that the dramatist of three years' standing seems still to have placed as high a value on his cousin's judgment, as when recording her approval of his first effort for the stage. The play was a piece of admittedly moral purpose, and was dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole. The first line of the autograph is, apparently, missing.
"I hope your Ladyship will honour the Scenes, which I presume to lay before you, with your Perusal. As they are written on a Model I never yet attempted, I am exceedingly anxious least they should find least Mercy from you than my lighter Productions. It will be a slight compensation to the modern Husband, that your Ladyship's censure will defend him from the Possibility of any other Reproof, since your least Approbation will always give me a Pleasure, infinitely superior to the loudest Applauses of a Theatre. For whatever has past your judgment, may, I think without any Imputation of Immodesty, refer Want of Success to Want of Judgment in an Audience. I shall do myself the honour of waiting on your Ladyship at Twickenham next Monday to receive my Sentence, and am, Madam, with the most devoted Respect
"Your Ladyship's
"most Obedient most humble Servant
"Henry [Ffielding]. [5]
"London 7'br 4."
In 1731-32 the burlesque entitled the Tragedy of Tragedies; or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great, took the Town. The Tragedy parodies the absurdities of tragedians; and so far won immortality that in 1855 it was described as still holding the stage. But its chief modern interest lies in the tradition that Swift once observed that he "had not laughed above twice" in his life,--once at the tricks of a merry-andrew, and again when Fielding's Tom Thumb killed the ghost. The design for the frontispiece of the edition of 1731, here reproduced, is from the pencil of Hogarth; and is the first trace of a connexion between Fielding and the painter who was to be honoured so frequently in his pages. An adaptation from Molière, produced in 1733, under the title of the Miser, won from Voltaire the praise of having added to the original "quelques beautes de dialogue particulières a sa [Fielding's] nation." The leading character in the Miser, Lovegold, became a stock part, and survived to our own days, having been a favourite with Phelps. In Don Quixote in England, produced in 1733 or [34], [6] Fielding reappears in the character of patriotic censor with the design, as appears from the dedication to Lord Chesterfield, of representing "the Calamities brought on a Country by general Corruption." No less than fifteen songs are interspersed in the play, and it is matter for curious conjecture why none of them was chosen for a reprint among the collected verses published ten years later in the Miscellanies. Time has almost failed to preserve even the hunting-song beginning finely--