Henry Fielding: a Memoir Part 2

"Humour and Wit, in each politer Age, Triumphant, rear'd the Trophies of the Stage: But only Farce, and Shew, will now go down, And HARLEQUIN'S the Darling of the Town."

Ralph bids his audience turn to the 'infant stage' of Goodman's Fields for matter more worthy their attention; and his promise that there

"The Comick Muse, in Smiles severely gay, Shall scoff at Vice, and laugh its Crimes away"

must surely have been inspired by the young genius from whom twenty years later came the formal declaration of his endeavour, in _Tom Jones,_ "to laugh mankind out of their favourite follies and vices."

The special follies of the _Temple Beau_ have, for background, of course, those precincts in which Fielding was later to labour so a.s.siduously as a student, and as a member of the Middle Temple; but where, as the young Templar of the play observes, "dress and the ladies" might also very pleasantly employ a man's time. But except for an oblique hit at duelling, a custom which Fielding was later to attack with curious warmth, this second play seems to yield few pa.s.sages of biographical interest. Of very different value for our purpose is the third play, which within only two months appeared from a pen stimulated, presumably, by empty pockets. This was the comedy ent.i.tled the _Author's Farce_, being the first portion of a medley which included the '_Puppet Show call'd the Pleasures of the Town_; the whole being acted in the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, long since demolished in favour of the present building.

In the person of Harry Luckless, the hero of the _Author's Farce_, it is impossible not to surmise the figure of young Fielding himself; a figure gay and spirited as those of his first comedy, but, by now, well acquainted with the hungers and the straits of a 'hackney writer.' Mr Luckless wears a laced-coat and makes a handsome figure (we remember that Fielding had always the grand air), whereby his landlady, clamouring for her rent, upbraids him for deceiving her: "Cou'd I have guess'd that I had a Poet in my House! Cou'd I have look'd for a Poet under lac'd Clothes!"

The poor author offers her the security of his (as yet unacted) play; whereupon Mrs Moneywood (lineal ancestress of Mrs Raddles) pertinently cries out: "I would no more depend on a Benefit-Night of an unacted Play, than I would on a Benefit-Ticket in an undrawn Lottery." Luckless next appeals to what should be his landlady's heart, a.s.suring her that unless she be so kind as to invite him "I am afraid I shall scarce prevail on my Stomach to dine to-day." To which the enraged lady answers: "O never fear that: you will never want a Dinner till you have dined at all the Eating-houses round.--No one shuts their Doors against you the first time; and I scarce think you are so kind, seldom to trouble them a second." And that the good landlady had some grounds for her wrath is but too apparent when she announces: "Well, I'm resolv'd when you are gone away (which I heartily hope will be very soon) I'll hang over my Door in great red Letters, _No Lodging for Poets_ ... My Floor is all spoil'd with Ink, my Windows with Verses, and my Door has been almost beat down with Duns.'

While the landlady is still fuming, enters our author's man, Jack.

"_Jack_. An't please your Honour, I have been at my Lord's, and his Lords.h.i.+p thanks you for the Favour you have offer'd of reading your Play to him; but he has such a prodigious deal of Business he begs to be excus'd. I have been with Mr _Keyber_ too: he made no Answer at all...."

"_Luckless_. Jack.

"_Jack_. Sir.

"_Luckless_. Fetch my other Hat hither. Carry it to the p.a.w.nbroker's.

"_Jack_. To your Honour's own p.a.w.nbroker.

"_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 s.h.i.+llings "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 cla.s.sical 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 n.o.ble 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 s.e.x, 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 Ladys.h.i.+p 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 Ladys.h.i.+p'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 Ladys.h.i.+p at Twickenham next Monday to receive my Sentence, and am, Madam, with the most devoted Respect

"Your Ladys.h.i.+p's "most Obedient most humble Servant "Henry Ffielding. [5]

"London 7'br 4."

In 1731-32 the burlesque ent.i.tled 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 Moliere, produced in 1733, under the t.i.tle of the _Miser_, won from Voltaire the praise of having added to the original "quelques beautes de dialogue particulieres 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--

"The dusky Night rides down the Sky, And ushers in the Morn; The Hounds all join in glorious Cry, The Huntsman winds his Horn:"

But a happier fate has befallen the fifth song, now familiar as the first verse of the _Roast Beef of Old England_. It is eminently appropriate that the most distinctly national of English novelists should have written:

"_When mighty Rost Beef was the_ Englishman's _food, It enn.o.bled our Hearts, and enriched our Blood; Our Soldiers were brave and our Courtiers were good.

Oh, the Rost Beef of old England, And old_ England's _Rost Beef!_

"_Then_, Britons, _from all nice Dainties refrain, Which effeminate_ Italy, France, _and_ Spain; _And mighty Rost Beef shall command on the Main.

Oh, the Rost Beef_, etc."

To this truly prolific period of the young 'hackney writer's' pen belongs an _Epilogue_, hitherto overlooked, written for Charles Johnson's five-act play _Caelia or the Perjur'd Lover_, and spoken by Kitty Clive. The lines, which are hardly worth reprinting, consist of an ironic attack on the laxity of town morals, where "Miss may take great liberties upon her," and each woman is virtuous till she be found out.

An average of two plays a year is a record scarcely conducive to literary excellence; any more than is the empty cupboard, and the frequent recourse to 'your honour's own p.a.w.nbroker,' so often and so honourably familiar to struggling genius. "The farces written by Mr Fielding," says Murphy"...

were generally the production of two or three mornings, so great was his facility in writing"; and we have seen Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's a.s.sertion that much of his work would have been thrown into the fire had not his dinner gone with it. Of the struggles of these early years [7]

(struggles never wholly remitted, for, to quote Lady Mary again, Fielding would have wanted money had his hereditary lands been as extensive as his imagination) we get further suggestions in the _Poetical Epistle_ addressed to Sir Robert Walpole when the young poet was but twenty-three.

The lines go with a gallant spirit, but it is not difficult to detect a savour of grim hards.h.i.+p behind the jests:

"While at the Helm of State you ride, Our Nation's Envy and its Pride; While foreign Courts with Wonder gaze, And curse those Councils which they praise; Would you not wonder, Sir, to view Your Bard a greater Man than you?

Which that he, is you cannot doubt, When you have heard the Sequel out.

"The Family that dines the latest, Is in our Street esteem'd the greatest; But latest Hours must surely fall Before him who ne'er dines at all.

Your Taste in Architect, you know, Hath been admir'd by Friend and Foe; But can your earthly Domes compare With all my Castles--in the Air?

"We're often taught it doth behove us To think those greater who're above us; Another Instance of my Glory, Who live above you, twice two Story, And from my Garret can look down On the whole Street of Arlington." [8]

Not to depend too greatly on Mr Luckless for our picture of Fielding as a playwright, we will conclude it with the well-known pa.s.sage from Murphy: "When he had contracted to bring on a play, or a farce, it is well known, by many of his friends now living, that he would go home rather late from a tavern, and would the next morning deliver a scene to the players, written upon the papers which had wrapped the tobacco in which he so much delighted." Would that some of those friends had recorded for our delight the wit that, alas! has vanished like the smoke through which it was engendered. What would we not give for the table-talk of Henry Fielding.

[1] _Joseph Andrews_, Book iii. Chap. iii.

[2] _Miscellanies_, ed. 1743, vol. ii. p. 62.

[3] In the _Miscellanies_ of 1743.

[4] _Fielding_, Austin Dobson, 1907. App. iv.

[5] What appears to be the original autograph of the above letter is now (1909) in the library of the Boston Athenaeum, having been presented by Mr C. P. Greenough.

[6] _Not.i.tia Dramatica_ (British Museum. MSS. Dept.) and Genest give 1734 as the date of Don Quixote; Murphy, edition of 1766, vol. iii p. 249, gives 1733.

[7] For the refutation of Genest's confusion of Timothy Fielding, a strolling player, with Henry Fielding, see Austin Dobson, _Fielding_, pp.

28, 29.

[8] The _Miscellanies_. Edition 1743.

CHAPTER III

MARRIAGE

"What happiness the world affords equal to the possession of such a woman as Sophia I sincerely own I have never yet discovered."