Henry Fielding: a Memoir. G. M. Godden
the picturesque old town of Lyme for a background, suggest a most appropriate first act to Harry Fielding's biographical tragi-comedy." 13 It is possible that Fielding's own pen supplied the conclusion to this first act. For he tells us, in the preface to the Miscellanies, that a version, in burlesque verse, of part of Juvenal's sixth satire was originally sketched out before he was twenty, and that it was "all the Revenge taken by an injured Lover." The story loses none of its zest, moreover, when we remember that Harry Fielding was at this time still a Ward of Chancery.
CHAPTER II
PLAYHOUSE BARD
"I could not help reflecting how often the greatest abilities lie wind-bound, as it were, in life; or if they venture out, and attempt to beat the seas, they struggle in vain against wind and tide."
--Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.
It was but three years after the Lyme Regis episode that Henry Fielding, then a lad of one and twenty, won attention as a successful writer of comedy. Of this his first entry into the gay world there are little but generalities to record; but, inaccurate as Murphy is in some matters of fact, there seems no reason to doubt the truth of the engaging picture which he draws of the young man's début upon the Town. We read of the gaiety and quickness of his fancy; the wild flow of his spirits; the brilliancy of his wit; the activity of his mind, eager to know the world. To the possession of genius allied to the happiest temper, a temper "for the most part overflowing into wit, mirth, and good-humour," young Fielding added a handsome face, a magnificent physique (he stood over six feet high), and the fullest vigour of constitution. "No man," wrote his cousin, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, "enjoyed life more than he did." What wonder that he was soon "in high request with the men of taste and literature," or that report affirms him to have been no less welcome in ranks of society not at all distinguished by a literary flavour.
That a youth so gifted, so "formed and disposed for enjoyment," should find himself his own master, in London, almost presupposes a too liberal indulgence in the follies that must have so easily beset him. When the great and cold Mr. Secretary Addison, no less than that "very merry Spirit," Dick Steele, and the splendid Congreve, drank more than was good for them, what chance would there be for a brilliant, ardent lad of twenty, suddenly plunged into the robust society of that age? If Fielding, like his elders, indisputably loved good wine, let us remember that none of the heroes of his three great novels, neither that rural innocent Joseph Andrews, nor the exuberant youth Tom Jones, nor erring, repentant Captain Booth are immoderate drinkers. The degradation of drinking is, in Fielding's pages, accorded to brutalised if honest country squires, and cruel and corrupt magistrates; and there is little evidence throughout his life to indicate that the great novelist drank more freely than did the genial heroes of his pen. As regards Murphy's general assertion that, at this his entrance into life, young Fielding "launched wildly into a career of dissipation" no other reputable contemporary evidence is discoverable of the "wildness" popularly attributed to Fielding. That his youth was headlong and undisciplined is a plausible surmise; but justice demands that the charge be recognised as a surmise and nothing more. How keenly, twenty years later, he could appreciate the handicap that such early indulgences impose on a man's future life may be gathered from a passage in Joseph Andrews which is not without the ring of personal feeling. The speaker is a generous and estimable country gentleman, living in Arcadian retirement with his wife and children. Descended of a good family and born a gentleman, he narrates how his education was acquired at a public school, and extended to a mastery of the Latin, and a tolerable knowledge of the Greek, language. Becoming his own master at sixteen he soon left school, for, he tells his listeners, "being a forward Youth, I was extremely impatient to be in the World: For which I thought my Parts, Knowledge, and Manhood thoroughly qualified me. And to this early Introduction into Life, without a Guide, I impute all my future Misfortunes; for besides the obvious Mischiefs which attend this, there is one which hath not been so generally observed. The first Impression which Mankind receives of you, will be very difficult to eradicate. How unhappy, therefore, must it be to fix your Character in Life, before you can possibly know its Value, or weigh the Consequences of those Actions which are to establish your future Reputation?" 1 That the wise and strenuous Fielding of later years, the energetic student at the Bar, the active and patriotic journalist, the merciless exponent of the hypocrite, the spendthrift, and the sensualist, the creator of the most perfect type of womanhood in English fiction (so said Dr. Johnson and Thackeray) should look back sadly on his own years of hot-blooded youth is entirely natural; but even so this passage and the well-known confession placed in the mouth of the supposed writer of the Journey from this World to the Next, 2 no more constitute direct evidence than do Murphy's unattested phrases, or the anonymous scurrilities of eighteenth-century pamphleteers.
By birth and education Fielding's natural place was in the costly society of those peers and men of wealth and fashion who courted the brilliant young wit; but fortune had decreed otherwise, and at this his first entrance on the world he found, as he himself said, no choice but to be a hackney writer or a hackney coachman. True, his father allowed him a nominal £200 a year; but this, to quote another of his son's observations, "anybody might pay that would." The fact was that Colonel Fielding's marriage with Madame Rasa had resulted in a large and rapidly increasing family; and this burden, together with "the necessary demands of his station for a genteel and suitable expence," made it impossible for him to spare much for the maintenance of his eldest son. Launched thus on the Town, with every capacity for spending an income the receipt of which was denied to him, the young man flattered himself that he should find resources in his wit and invention; and accordingly he commenced as writer for the stage. His first play, a comedy entitled Love in Several Masks, was performed at Drury Lane in February 1728, just before the youthful dramatist had attained his twenty-first year. In his preface to these 'light scenes' he alludes with some pride to this distinction--"I believe I may boast that none ever appeared so early on the stage";--and he proceeds to a generous acknowledgment of the aid received from those dramatic stars of the eighteenth-century, Colley Gibber, Mr. Wilks and Mrs. Oldfield, all of whom appeared in the cast. Of the two former he says, "I cannot sufficiently acknowledge their civil and kind behaviour previous to its representation"; from which we may conclude, as his biographer Laurence points out, that Harry Fielding was already familiar with the society of the green-room. To Mrs. Oldfield,--that charming actress
"In publick Life, by all who saw Approv'd
In private Life, by all who knew her Lov'd"--
the young man expresses yet warmer acknowledgments. "Lastly," he declares, "I can never express my grateful sense of the good nature of Mrs. Oldfield … nor do I owe less to her excellent judgment, shown in some corrections which I shall for my own sake conceal." The comedy is dedicated, with the graceful diction and elaborate courtesies of the period, to Fielding's cousin, that notable eighteenth-century wit, the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; and from the dedication we learn that to Lady Mary's approval, on her first perusal, the play owed its existence. What the approval of a great lady of those times meant for the young writer may be measured by the fact that Fielding concludes his dedication by solemnly 'informing the world' that the representation of his comedy was twice honoured with Her Ladyship's presence.
In view of the frequent accusation of coarseness brought against Fielding, we may quote a few lines of the prologue with which he made his literary entry into the world. Here his audience are promised
"Humour, still free from an indecent Flame,
Which, should it raise your Mirth, must raise your Shame:
Indecency's the Bane to Ridicule,
And only charms the Libertine, or Fool:
Nought shall offend the Fair One's Ears to-day,
Which they might blush to hear, or blush to