Henry Fielding: a Memoir Part 7

"Wit is generally observed to love to reside in empty pockets."

_Joseph Andrews_.

The last retort on Colley Cibber had scarcely been launched from the columns of the _Champion_, when that intrepid 'Censor of Great Britain'

and indefatigable law student, _Captain Hercules Vinegar_, attained the full dignities of a barrister of the Middle Temple. On June 20, 1740, Fielding was called to the Bar; and on the same day the Benchers of his Inn a.s.signed to him chambers at No. 4 Pump Court, "up three pair of stairs." This a.s.signment, according to the wording of the Temple records, was "for the term of his natural life." These chambers may still be seen, with their low ceilings and panelled walls, very much to all appearance as when tenanted by Harry Fielding. The windows of the sitting-room and bedroom look out on to the beautiful old buildings of Brick Court, and from the head of the staircase one looks across to the stately gilded sundial of Pump Court, old even in Fielding's day, with its warning motto:

"Shadows we are and like shadows depart."

Here, in these lofty chambers, up their "three pair" of worn and narrow stairs, Fielding donned his barrister's gown, and waited for briefs; and, possessing as he did an imagination "fond of seizing every gay prospect,"

and natural spirits that gave him, as his cousin Lady Mary tells us, cheerfulness in a garret, this summer of 1740 must have been full of sanguine hopes. He was now thirty-three, and his splendid physique had not yet become shattered by gout. He had gained, Murphy observes, no inconsiderable reputation by the _Champion_; his position as a brilliant political playwright had been long ago a.s.sured by _Pasquin_; the party to whose patriotic interests he had devoted so much energy and wit was now rapidly approaching power; and two years of eager application had equipped him with 'no incompetent share of learning' for a profession in which, we are told, he aspired to eminence. The swift disappointment of these brave hopes, the fast coming years of sickness, distress, and grief endow the old chambers with something of tragedy; but in June, 1740, the shadows were still but a sententious word on the dial.

There is practically no surviving record of Fielding's activity as a barrister. From Murphy we learn that his pursuit of the law was hampered by want of means; and that, moreover, even his indomitable energies were soon often forced to yield to disabling attacks of illness. So long as his health permitted him he "attended with punctual a.s.siduity" on the Western circuit, and in term time at Westminster Hall. But gout rapidly "began to make such a.s.saults upon him as rendered it impossible for him to be as constant at the bar as the laboriousness of his profession required," and he could only follow the law in intervals of health. Under such "severities of pain and want" he yet made efforts for success; and the tribute rendered by his first biographer to the courage of those efforts deserves quotation in full: "It will serve to give us an idea of the great force of his mind, if we consider him pursuing so arduous a study under the exigencies of family distress, with a wife and children, whom he tenderly loved, looking up to him for subsistence, with a body lacerated by the acutest pains, and with a mind distracted by a thousand avocations and obliged for immediate supply to produce almost extempore a farce, a pamphlet, or a newspaper." Murphy's careless pen seems here to confuse the student years with those of a.s.siduous effort at the Bar; and the extempore farces are, judging by the dates of Fielding's collected plays, no more than a rhetorical flourish: but there seems no reason to doubt the essential truth of this picture of the vigorous struggles of the sanguine, witty, and not unlearned barrister, ambitious of distinction, and always sensitively anxious as to the maintenance of his wife and children. We may see him attending the Western circuit in March and again in August, riding from Winchester to Salisbury, thence to Dorchester and Exeter, and on to Launceston, Taunton, Bodmin, Wells or Bristol as the case might be; constant in his appearance at Westminster; and supplementing his briefs by political pamphlets written in the service of an Opposition supported by the intellect and integrity of the day.

It is inexplicable that no records, in the letters or diaries of his brother lawyers, should have come down to us of circuits, enlivened by the wit of Harry Fielding; that practically all traces of his professional work should be lost; and that concerning the many friends.h.i.+ps which he is recorded to have made at the Bar we should know practically nothing beyond his own cordial acknowledgment of the lawyers' response, three years after his call, to the subscription for the _Miscellanies_. In the preface to those volumes he writes: "I cannot however forbear mentioning my sense of the Friends.h.i.+p shown me by a Profession of which I am a late and unworthy Member, and from whose a.s.sistance I derive more than half the Names which appear to this subscription." All that we have to add to this, is the unconscious humour of Murphy's observation that the friends.h.i.+ps Fielding met with "in the course of his studies, and indeed through the remainder of his life from the gentlemen of the legal profession in general, and particularly from some who have since risen to be the first ornaments of the law, will ever do honour to his memory." Had the names of these worthy 'ornaments' been preserved, posterity could now give them due recognition as having been honoured by the friends.h.i.+p of Henry Fielding. [1]

Fielding in his habit, as he lived, is for ever eluding us. His tall figure vanishes behind the prolific playwright, the exuberant politician, the truculent journalist, the indefatigable magistrate, the great creative genius. But at no point does the wittiest man of his day, and a lawyer of some repute--'Mr Fielding is allowed to have acquired a respectable share of jurisprudence'--escape us so completely as during these years of 'punctual a.s.siduity' at the Bar. His very domicile is unknown, after the surrender of those pleasant chambers in Pump Court, on November 28 1740.

The political activities of "Counsellor Fielding" stand out far more clearly than do the legal labours of these years of struggle at the Bar.

The year of his call, 1740, was one of constant embarra.s.sment for Sir Robert Walpole, whose long enjoyment of single power was now at last drawing to a miserable close. The conduct of the Spanish War was arraigned, and suggestions were made that the Government were in secret alliance with the enemy. When the news came, in March, that Walpole's parliamentary opponent, the bluff Admiral Vernon, had captured Porto Bello from Spain, with six s.h.i.+ps only, the public rejoicing and votes of congratulation were so many attacks on the peace-at-any-price Minister. A powerful fleet, designed against Spain, lay inactive in Torbay the greater part of the summer, through (alleged) contrary winds. And when Parliament met in November 1740, an onslaught by the Duke of Argyll in the Lords paved the way for the celebrated attack on Sir Robert in the Commons, known as "The Motion" of February 13, 1741. A fine political cartoon published in the following month, and here reproduced, in which Walpole appears as mocking at the death and burial of this same "Motion" of censure (which the House had rejected), places Fielding in the forefront of the Opposition procession. The dead "Motion" is being carried to the "Opposition" family vault, already occupied by Jack Cade and other "reformers"; and the bier is preceded by five standard-bearers, sadly carrying the insignia of the party's papers. Among these, and second only to the famous _Craftsman_, comes Fielding's tall figure, bearing aloft a standard inscribed _The Champion_, and emblazoned with that terrible club of _Captain Hercules Vinegar_, which, we may recall, was always ready to "fall on any knave in company." Behind the bier hobbles, clearly, the old d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough; and Walpole's fat figure stands in the foreground, laughing uproariously at this "Funeral of Faction." In the doggerel verses beneath this cartoon, it is very plainly hinted that "old Sarah," and the Opposition, were in league with the Stewarts. In this historic debate, for which members secured seats at six o'clock in the morning, the vote of censure on "the _one person_" arraigned was defeated, Sir Robert once again securing a majority, and so "the Motion" as the cartoonist depicts, died "of a Disappointment." Another cartoon commemorating this ill-fated effort is instructive as showing, again in the foreground of the fight, a figure wearing a barrister's wig, gown, and bands, and inscribed with the words _Pasquin_ and _The Champion_. The Opposition Leader, Pulteney, leads both the _Pasquin_ figure, and another representing the paper _Common Sense_, literally by the nose with the one hand, while with the other he neatly catches, on his drawn sword, Walpole's organ the _Gazetteer_. In doggerel verses attached to the print Fielding is complimented with the following entire verse to himself:--

"Then the Champion of the Age, Being Witty, wise, and Sage, Comes with Libells on the Stage."

This _Pasquin_ figure has none of the personal characteristics of Fielding, neither his "length of nose" nor his stately stature, so well suggested in the former print; but, lay figure though it be, it symbolises no less clearly the prominent part he played in these final political struggles of 1741. Also the lawyer's dress with which Fielding is here signified is noteworthy; and similar acknowledgment of his new dignities may be seen in the reference (in a copy of Walpole's _Gazetteer_ for 1740) to the attacks levelled on Sir Robert by "Captain Vinegar--_i.e._ Counsellor F---d--g."

These popular indications of Fielding's activity in the fighting ranks of the Opposition, during this last year of Walpole's domination, are supplemented by the evidence of his own pen. As early as January 1741, and while the grand Parliamentary attack of the 13th of February was but brewing, he published an eighteenpenny pamphlet, in verse, satirising Sir Robert's lukewarm conduct of the war with Spain. To the t.i.tle of _The Vernoniad_, there was added a lengthy mock-t.i.tle in Greek, the whole being presented as a lost fragment by Homer, describing, in epic style, the mission of one "Mammon" sent by Satan to baffle the fleets of a nation engaged in war with _Iberia_. "Mammon" is a perfectly obvious satirical sketch of Walpole himself, in the execution of which the hand that had drawn the corrupt fiddler "Mr Quidam" and the tipsy "Mr Pillage" for the Haymarket stage, has in no wise lost its cunning. "Mammon" (Walpole was reputed to have ama.s.sed much wealth) hides his palace walls by heaps of "ill-got Pictures." The pictures collected at Houghton, the Minister's pretentious Norfolk seat, were famous; and the notes to the "Text" are careful to depict, in ill.u.s.tration, "some rich Man without the least Taste having purchased a Picture at an immense Price, lifting up his eyes to it with Wonder and Astonishment, without being able to discover wherein its true Merit lies." "Mammon" declares virtue to be but a name, and his wonted eloquence is bribery. Sir Robert a.s.serted that every man has his price. "Mammon" preserves dulness and ignorance, "while Wit and Learning starve." Walpole's illiterate tastes were notorious. At the close of the poem, "Mammon" accomplishes the behest of his master, Satan, by bribing contrary winds to drive back the English s.h.i.+ps (a satire on Walpole's conduct of the war); and he finally returns to h.e.l.l, and "in his Palace keeps a _three Weeks'_ Feast." Sir Robert it may be noted usually entertained for three weeks, in the spring, at Houghton. The whole is a slas.h.i.+ng example of the robust eighteenth-century political warfare, polished by constant cla.s.sical allusions and quotations; and doubtless it was read with delight in the coffee houses of the Town in that critical winter of 1740-1741. Two characteristic allusions must not be omitted.

Even in the heat of party hard hitting Fielding finds time for a thrust at Colley Cibber, whose prose it seems was in several places by no means to be comprehended till "explained by the _Herculean_ Labours of Captain _Vinegar_" And there is a pleasant reference to "my friend Hogarth the exactest Copier of Nature."

In this first month of 1741, Fielding published yet another poetical pamphlet for his party, but of a less truculent energy. _True Greatness_ is a poem inscribed to a recruit in the Opposition ranks, the celebrated George Bubb Dodington; and when the eulogiums offered by the poet to his political leaders, Argyll, Carteret, Chesterfield, and Lyttelton, to all of whom are ascribed that "True Greatness" which "lives but in the n.o.ble Mind," are completed by a description of Dodington as irradiating a blaze of virtues, this particular pamphlet becomes somewhat rueful reading. For Dodington was, if report speaks true, a pliant politician as well as an ineffable c.o.xcomb, although it must be admitted that he won eulogies and compliments alike from the perfect integrity of Lyttelton, and the honourable pen of James Thomson. Even Fielding's glowing lines do not outstrip Thomson's panegyric in _The Seasons_.

A more enduring interest however than the merits or demerits of a Dodington, lies in this s.h.i.+lling pamphlet. In it is clearly foreshadowed Fielding's great ironic outburst on false greatness, given to the world a few years later in the form of the history of that Napoleon in villany, the "great" Mr Jonathan Wild. In the medium of stiff couplets (verse being "a branch of Writing" which Fielding admits "I very little pretend to") the subject-matter of the magnificent irony of _Jonathan Wild_ is already sketched. Here the spurious "greatness" of inhuman conquerors, of droning pedants, of paltry beaus, of hermits proud of their humility, is mercilessly laid bare; and something is disclosed of the "piercing discernment" of that genius which, Murphy tell us, "saw the latent sources of human actions."

We have seen indications in Murphy's careless pages that these few years of Fielding's a.s.siduous efforts at the Bar were years burdened by "severities of want and pain." It is difficult not to admit a reference to some such personal experiences in a pa.s.sage in this same poem. The lines in question describe the Poet going hungry and thirsty

"As down Cheapside he meditates the Song"....

a "great tatter'd Bard," treading cautiously through the streets lest he meet a bailiff, oppressed with "want and with contempt," his very liberty to "wholesome Air" taken from him, yet possessing the greatness of mind that no circ.u.mstances can touch, and the power to bestow a fame that shall outlive the gifts of kings. This latter claim foreshadows the magnificent apostrophe in _Tom Jones_ on that unconquerable force of genius, able to confer immortality both on the poet, and the poet's theme. Was the 'great tatter'd Bard,' cautiously treading the streets, little esteemed, and yet the conscious possessor of true greatness (did not the author of _Tom Jones_ rely with confidence on receiving honour from generations yet unborn), none other than the tall figure of Fielding himself? At least we know that soon after this year he writes of having lately suffered accidents and waded through distresses, sufficient to move the pity of his readers, were he "fond enough of Tragedy" to make himself "the Hero of one."

One of the rare fragments of Fielding's autograph, [2] refers both to this pamphlet, and to the _Vernoniad_:

"Mr Nourse,

"Please to deliver Mr Chappell 50 of [crossed out: my] [_sic_] True Greatness and 50 of the Vernoniad.

Y'rs

"Hen. Ffielding.

"_April_ 20 1741."

In June of this year occurred the death of General Edmund Fielding, briefly noticed in the _London Magazine_ as that of an officer who "had served in the late Wars against _France_ with much Bravery and Reputation." The General's own struggles to support his large family probably prevented his death affecting the circ.u.mstances of his eldest son. In the same month Fielding appears as attending a "Meeting of the Partners in the Champion," held at the Feathers Tavern, on June 29. The list of the partners present at the Feathers is given as follows:--[3]

Present

Mr Fielding Mr Nourse Mr Hodges Mr Chappelle

Mr Cogan Mr Gilliver Mr Chandler

The business recorded was the sale of the "Impressions of the Champion in two Vollumes, 12'o, No. 1000." The impression was put up to the Company by auction, and was knocked down to Mr Henry Chappelle for 110, to be paid to the partners. The majority of the partners are declared by the Minutes to have confirmed the bargain; the minority, as appears from the list of signatures, being strictly that of one, Henry Fielding. After this dissension Fielding's name ceases to appear at the _Champion_ meetings; and as he himself states that he left off writing for the paper from this very month the evidence certainly points to a withdrawal on his part in June 1741 from both the literary and the business management of the paper.

The edition referred to in the Minutes is doubtless that advertised in the _London Daily Post_ a few days before the meeting of the partners, as a publication of the _Champion_ "in two neat Pocket Volumes." [4]

Meanwhile the whole force of the Opposition was thrown into the battle of a General Election; and it is interesting to note that Pitt stood for the seat for Fielding's boyish home, and the home of his wife, that of Old Sarum. The elections went largely against Walpole, and by the end of June defeat was prophesied for a Minister who would only be supported by a majority of sixteen.

It is somewhat inexplicable that at this, the very moment of the approaching victory of his party Fielding appears to have withdrawn from all journalistic work. "I take this Opportunity to declare in the most solemn Manner," he writes, in after years, "I have long since (as long as from _June_ 1741) desisted from writing one Syllable in the _Champion_, or any other public Paper." And yet more unexpected is the fact that six months later, during the last weeks of Walpole's failing power, a rumour should be abroad that Fielding was a.s.sisting his old enemy. In one of his rare references to his private life, that in the Preface to the _Miscellanies_, he seeks to clear himself from unjust censures "as well on account of what I have not writ, as for what I have"; and, as an instance of such baseless aspersions, he relates that, in this winter of 1741, "I received a letter from a Friend, desiring me to vindicate myself from two very opposite Reflections, which two opposite Parties thought fit to cast on me, _viz_. the one of writing in the _Champion_ (tho' I had not then writ in it for upwards of half a year) the other, of writing in the Gazetteer, in which I never had the honour of inserting a single Word."

What can have occurred, in the bewildering turmoil of that eighteenth-century party strife, that the author of _Pasquin_, the possessor of "Captain Vinegar's" Herculean Club, should have to vindicate himself from a charge of writing in the columns of Walpole's _Gazetteer_.

During these last months of Sir Robert's power his Cabinet was much divided, and two of his Ministers were in active revolt; possibly rumour a.s.signed the services of the witty pen of Counsellor Fielding to these Opposition Ministerialists. But that some change did indeed take place in Fielding's political activities, in these last six months of 1741 is obvious from his withdrawal from writing in any "Public" paper; and from pa.s.sages in the last political pamphlet known to have come from his pen.

This pamphlet, ent.i.tled _The Opposition. A Vision_, was published in the winter of 1741, a winter of severe illness, and of "other circ.u.mstances"

which, as he tells us, "served as very proper Decorations" to the sickbeds of himself, his wife, and child. It is a lively attack on the divided councils and leaders of the Opposition, thrown into the form of a dream, caused by the author's falling asleep over "a large quarto Book int.i.tuled 'An apology for the Life of Mr Colley Gibber, Comedian.'" In his dream Fielding meets the Opposition, in the form of a waggon, drawn by very ill-matched a.s.ses, the several drivers of which have lost their way. The luggage includes the Motion for 1741, and a trunk containing the _Champion_ newspaper. One pa.s.senger protests that he has been hugely spattered by the "Dirt" of the "last Motion," and that he will get out, rather than drive through more dirt. A gentleman of "a meagre aspect" (is he the lean Lyttelton?) leaves the waggon; and another observes that the a.s.ses "appear to me to be the worst fed a.s.ses I ever beheld ... that long sided a.s.s they call _Vinegar_, which the Drivers call upon so often to _gee up_, and _pull l.u.s.tily_, I never saw an a.s.s with a worse Mane, or a more s.h.a.gged Coat; and that grave a.s.s yoked to him, which they name _Ralph_, and who pulls and brays like the Devil, Sir, he does not seem to have eat since the hard Frost. [5] Surely, considering the wretched Work they are employed in, they deserve better Meat."

The longsided a.s.s, Vinegar, with the worst of manes and the most s.h.a.gged coat, short even of provender, recalls the picture, drawn twelve months previously, of the great hungry tatter'd Bard; and the inference seems fair enough that for Fielding politics were no lucrative trade. A more creditable inference, in those days of universal corruption, it may be added, would be hard to find. The honour of a successful party writer who yet remained poor in the year 1741, must have been kept scrupulously clean. The _Vision_ proceeds to show the waggon, with two new sets of a.s.ses from Cornwall and Scotland (the elections had gone heavily against Walpole in both these districts), suddenly turning aside from the "Great Country Road" (the Opposition was known as the Country Party); and the protesting pa.s.sengers are told that the end of their journey is "St James." Some of the a.s.ses, flinching, are "well whipt"; but the waggon leaves the dreamer and many of its followers far behind. Suddenly a Fat Gentleman's coach stops the way. The drivers threaten to drive over the coach, when one of the a.s.ses protests that the waggon is leaving the service of the country, and going aside on its own ends, and that "the Honesty of even an a.s.s would start" at being used for some purposes. The waggon is all in revolt and confusion, when the Fat Gentleman, who appeared to have "one of the pleasantest and best natured Countenances I ever beheld," at last had the a.s.ses unharness'd, and turned into a delicious meadow, where they fell to feeding, as after "long Abstinence."

Finally, the pleasant-faced fat gentleman's coach proceeds on the way from which the waggon had deviated, carrying with it some of the former drivers of the same; the mob burn the derelict obstructing vehicle; and their noise, and the stink and smoke of the conflagration wake the dreamer.

In this last word of Fielding's active political career (for his later anti-Jacobite papers are concerned rather with Const.i.tutional and Protestant, than with party strife), a retirement from political collar-work is certainly signified. His reasons for such a step escape us in the mist of those confused and heated conflicts. His detestation of Walpole's characteristic methods may very well have roused his ever ready fighting instincts, whereas, once Walpole's fall was practically a.s.sured the weak forces of the Opposition (William Pitt being yet many years from power) could have availed but little to enlist his penetrating intellect.

And he may by now have found that politics afforded, in those days, but scanty support to an honourable pen.

But supposition, in lack of further evidence, is fruitless; all that we can clearly perceive is that this winter of sickness and distress marks a final severance from party politics. The hungry 'hackney writer' of the lean sides and s.h.a.gged coat, if not, indeed, turned to graze in the fat meadow of his dream, was at last freed from an occupation that could but shackle the genius now ready to break forth in the publication of _Joseph Andrews_.

[1] A tantalising reference to one such acquaintance occurs in Lord Campbell's _Lives of the Chancellors_. Vol. v. p. 357. In notes made by Lord Camden's nephew, George Hardinge, for a proposed Life of the Lord Chancellor there is this entry: "formed an acquaintance ... with Henry Fielding ... called to the Bar."

[2] Now in the possession of W. K. Bixby, Esq., of St Louis, U.S.A.

[3] In a ma.n.u.script copy of the Minutes, in the possession of the present writer.

[4] _London Daily Post_, June 18-26, 1741.

[5] The hard frost would be the terrible preceding winter of 1739-40, a winter long remembered for the severity of the cold, the cost of provisions, and the suffering of the poor.

CHAPTER VIII

JOSEPH ANDREWS

"This kind of writing I do not remember to have seen hitherto attempted in our language."

Preface to _Joseph Andrews_.

On the 2nd of February 1742 Sir Robert Walpole, the 'Colossos' of popular broadsides, under whose feet England had lain for exactly thirty years, received his final defeat; and the intrepid wit, who for the past eight years had heartily lashed the tyrannies and corruptions of that 'Great Man,' enjoyed at last the satisfaction of witnessing the downfall of the _Mr Quiddam_ and _Mr Pillage_ of his plays, of the _Plunderer_ and _Mammon_ of his pamphlets, of the _Bra.s.s_ on whom many a stinging blow had fallen in the columns of his _Champion_.