"Can then another's Anguish give you Joy?
Or is it such a Triumph to destroy?
We, like the fabled Frogs, consider thus,
This may be Sport to you, but it is Death to us."
This note of personal protest recalls an indisputably reminiscent observation in Amelia, to the effect that although the kindness of a faithful and beloved wife compensates most of the evils of life, it "rather serves to aggravate the misfortune of distressed circumstances, from the consideration of the share which she is to bear in them." We all know how bravely Amelia bore that share; how cheerfully she would cook the supper; how firmly she confronted disaster. To realise how deeply Fielding felt the pain of such struggles when falling upon "the best, the worthiest and the noblest of women" we need but turn again to his own pages. If, cries Amelia's husband, when his distresses overwhelm him, "if I was to suffer alone, I think I could bear them with some philosophy"; and again "this was the first time I had ever felt that distress which arises from the want of money; a distress very dreadful indeed in the married state for what can be more miserable than to see anything necessary to the preservation of the beloved creature and not be able to supply it?"
To supply for his Celia much less than the necessities of life Harry Fielding would undoubtedly have stripped his coat, and his shirt with it, off his back; but, at the end of this same month of February, fortune made the young couple sudden amends for the anxieties that seem to have surrounded them. This turn of the wheel is reflected with curious accuracy by an anonymous satirist of 1735:
"F---g, who Yesterday appear'd so rough,
Clad in coarse Frize, and plaister'd down with Snuff,
See how his Instant gaudy Trappings shine;
What Play-house Bard was ever seen so fine!
But this, not from his Humour glows, you'll say
But mere Necessity;--for last Night lay
In pawn the Velvet which he wears to [Day]." [3]
This relief, for a time at least, from the pressing anxieties of a 'play-house bard,' befell by the death of Charlotte Fielding's mother, Mrs Elizabeth Cradock of Salisbury, who died in February, but a week or two after the execution of a will wholly in favour of that 'dearly beloved' daughter. As the details of Mrs Fielding's inheritance have not hitherto been known, some portions of her mother's will may be quoted. "... I Elizabeth Cradock of Salisbury in the County of Wilts ... do make this my last will and testament ... Item I give to my daughter Catherine one shilling and all the rest and residue of my ready money plate jewels and estate whatsoever and wheresoever after my debts and funeral charges are fully paid and satisfied I give devize and bequeath the same unto my dearly beloved daughter Charlott Ffeilding wife of Henry Ffeilding of East Stour in the County of Dorset Esqre." Mrs Cradock proceeds to revoke all former wills; and appoints her said daughter "Charlott Ffeilding" as her sole executrix. The will is dated February 8 1734, old style, viz. 1735; and was proved in London on the 25th of the same month, 'Charlott Ffeilding,' as sole executrix, being duly sworn to administer. The provision of one shilling for another, and apparently not dearly beloved, daughter, Catherine, recalls the wicked sister in Amelia who "had some way or other disobliged her mother, a little before the old lady died," and who consequently was deprived of that inheritance which relieved Amelia and her husband from the direst straits.
As no plays are credited to Fielding's name for the ensuing months of 1735, it is a reasonable inference that the young Salisbury heiress, whose experience of London had, doubtless, included a pretty close acquaintance with the hardships of struggling genius, employed some of her inheritance to enable her husband to return to the home of his boyhood, on the "pleasant Banks of sweetly-winding Stour." There is no record of how the Stour estate, settled on Henry Fielding and his brother and sisters, was apportioned; but an engraving published in 1813 shows the old stone "farmhouse," which Fielding occupied, the kitchen of which then still remained as it was in the novelist's time, when it served as a parlour. Behind the house stood a famous locust tree; and close by was the village church served at this time, as the parish registers show, by the Rev. William Young, the original of the immortal Parson Adams of Joseph [Andrews]. [4] From a subsequent deed of sale we know that the estate consisted of at least three gardens, three orchards, eighty acres of meadow, one hundred and forty acres of pasture, ten acres of wood, two dove-houses, and "common of pasture for all manner of cattle." To the stone farmhouse, and to these orchards and meadows, commons and pastures, Fielding brought his wife, probably in this year of 1735; and memories of their sojourn at Stour surely inspired those references in Amelia to the country life of 'love, health, and tranquillity,' a life resembling a calm sea which "must appear dull in description; for who can describe the pleasures which the morning air gives to one in perfect health; the flow of spirits which springs up from exercise; the delights which parents feel from the prattle and innocent follies of their children; the joy with which the tender smile of a wife inspires a husband; or lastly the cheerful solid comfort which a fond couple enjoy in each others' conversation.--All these pleasures, and every other of which our situation was capable we tasted in the highest degree."
That a man endowed with Fielding's intense joy in living--he was "so formed for happiness," wrote his cousin Lady Mary, "it is a pity he was not immortal"--should eagerly taste all the pleasures of life as a country gentleman, and that in 'the highest degree,' is entirely consonant with his character. At the very end of his life, when dying of a complication of diseases, his happy social spirit was still unbroken; for we find him even then writing of his inability to enjoy an agreeable hour "without the assistance of a companion which has always appeared to me necessary to such [enjoyment]." [5] Nor would the generous temper, which was ever ready to share his most needed guinea with a friend scarce poorer than himself, be infected with niggardliness by the happy enjoyment of that position to which he was by birth entitled. The well-known account therefore, given by Murphy, of the East Stour episode is exactly what we might have expected of Harry Fielding in the part of country gentleman: "To that place [i.e. his estate of East Stour]," says Murphy, "he retired with his wife, on whom he doated, with a resolution to bid adieu to all the follies and intemperances to which he had addicted himself in the career of a town life. But unfortunately a kind of family pride here gained an ascendant over him, and he began immediately to vie in splendour with the neighbouring country 'squires. With an estate not much above two hundred pounds a year, and his wife's fortune, which did not exceed fifteen hundred pounds, he encumbered himself with a large retinue of servants, all clad in costly yellow liveries. For their master's honour, these people could not descend so low as to be careful of their apparel, but in a month or two were unfit to be seen; the 'squire's dignity required that they should be new-equipped; and his chief pleasure consisting in society and convivial mirth, hospitality threw open his doors, and, in less than three years, entertainments, hounds, and horses, entirely devoured a little patrimony...." This account is prefaced by gross inaccuracies of fact, inexplicable in a biographer writing but ten years after the death of his subject; but, as Mr Austin Dobson says, "there can be little doubt that the rafters of the old farm by the Stour, with the great locust tree at the back, which is figured in Hutchins's History of Dorset, rang often to hunting choruses, and that not seldom the 'dusky Night rode down the Sky' over the prostrate forms of Harry Fielding's guests." Petty-minded moralists like Murphy have gravely admonished the great novelist's memory for not having safely bestowed his estate in the consols of the period; they forget that a spirit of small economy is generally the compensation awarded to the poor average of humanity. The genius of Fielding knew how to enjoy splendidly, and to give lavishly.
[CHAPTER IV]
POLITICAL PLAYS
"Whoever attempteth to introduce corruption into any community, doth much the same thing, and ought to be treated in much the same manner with him who poisoneth a fountain."--Dedication of the Historical Register.