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CHAPTER XXIII

THE FAILURE OF AMELIA

To Fielding's harm, "Amelia" was taken literally as a self-revelation. The novel contains, indeed, more autobiography than "Tom Jones," as one would surmise were there no contemporary evidence to this effect. The injustice to Fielding arose from a disposition to make no allowance for the novelist's prerogative of dressing fact with fiction. Thus Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who remembered Fielding as he was in his younger days, wrote from Italy to her daughter, the Countess of Bute: "H. Fielding has given a true picture of himself and his first wife, in the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Booth, some compliments to his own figure excepted; and, I am persuaded, several of the incidents he mentions are real matters of fact. I wonder he does not perceive Tom Jones and Mr. Booth are sorry scoundrels." Lady Mary, who liked her cousin, hardly meant to call him a sorry scoundrel. It was rather that he had depicted himself as such. There is a technical distinction. What compliments Fielding paid to "his own figure" are not obvious. The novel contains but one description of Booth's appearance. When Mrs. James remarks that he is generally allowed to be handsome, her husband retorts: "He handsome? What with a nose like the proboscis of an elephant, with the shoulders of a porter, and the legs of a chairman?”

In her old age, Lady Mary talked much about Fielding to her daughter. Nor was Lady Bute, it is said, a stranger "to that beloved first wife whose picture he drew in his Amelia, where . . . even the glowing language he knew how

to employ did not do more than justice to the amiable qualities of the original, or to her beauty, although this had suffered a little from the accident related in the novel-a frightful overturn, which destroyed the gristle of her nose." "He loved her," to quote further, "passionately, and she returned his affection; yet led no happy life, for they were almost always miserably poor, and seldom in a state of quiet and safety. All the world knows what was his imprudence; if ever he possessed a score of pounds, nothing could keep him from lavishing it idly, or make him think of to-morrow. Sometimes they were living in decent lodgings with tolerable comfort; sometimes in a wretched garret without necessaries; not to speak of the spunginghouses and hiding places where he was occasionally to be found."'* This was the general view. Wits who were hostile to Fielding for political or other reasons, were quick to seize upon those incidents of the novel most damaging to the character of Booth and apply them directly to the author. In this way a false impression was conveyed of both Lieutenant Booth and Henry Fielding.

The truth is, Fielding followed in "Amelia" his own career but vaguely. It was inevitable that he should become more reminiscent here than in his other novels, for we all in time grow reminiscent. This mood, united with his realistic manner, made the novel read like autobiography despite its rather conventional plot. Incidents in his own life were fused with incidents drawn from the lives of others or from his imagination. So much of himself and his first wife was put into Booth and Amelia as pleased his semi-autobiographic art. Fact and fiction, when one comes to details, can be separated only here and there. Evidence from the outside or antecedent probability are the main guides.

279.

*Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu," 1861, I, 105; II,

The provincial town where Booth courted Amelia was Salisbury. This we should know even if the author had not let the name slip once or twice in the course of the story. Amelia and Elizabeth, or Betty, Harris correspond to Charlotte and Catherine Cradock. In both cases the father is dead, and the mother dies soon after the marriage of her younger daughter, bequeathing to her the family estate. It is a fair inference from Mrs. Cradock's will that she had become displeased with Catherine, who was cut off with a shilling. Catherine, however, forged no will in her own interest, nor is it to be supposed that she possessed the contemptible character of Betty. There was doubtless jealousy of her sister and opposition to Charlotte's marriage to Fielding. Her interference naturally reacted against her after Mrs. Cradock came to look with more favour upon her son-in-law. When Betty finally flees to France in disgrace, she takes passage at Poole, a seaport where the Cradock sisters used to visit and where their beauty was celebrated by a local poet. In recalling these old scenes, Fielding lived over again his youth when he danced with Charlotte and other Salisbury girls at the assemblies. It is all in "Amelia" as well as in those early verses addressed "To the Nymphs of New Sarum" and in the closing lines of "The Cat and the Fiddle." At one of these assemblies, Booth's gallant conduct won the admiration and love of Miss Mathews. Was Miss Mathews one of the nymphs, we wonder, with whom Harry Fielding sometimes led the dance at Salisbury? Was she betrayed by a handsome Cornet Hebbers? And did Fielding again meet her in London after she had become the mistress of a Colonel James? It may well have been so.

Dr. Harrison, the spiritual adviser of the Harris family, is a typical canon of Salisbury with a parish thirty miles distant. Such an ecclesiastic was the author's grandfather, John Fielding, who held a stall in Salisbury Cathedral and

the vicarage of Piddletown, about thirty miles away. This is probably a mere coincidence. One of the cathedral clergy very likely took an interest in the welfare of the Cradock sisters, and may have promoted the marriage of Charlotte to Harry Fielding. But he did not perform the ceremony; nor did he, we may be sure, propose to Fielding the stratagem whereby Booth gained entrance into the Harris house against the mother's will. That trick of concealing a lover in a hamper is an old romantic device which even the genius of Fielding could not make appear probable. Apart from what came from Ralph Allen, the qualities with which Fielding endowed Dr. Harrison were taken, I daresay, from more than one man among Fielding's clerical acquaintance, with special tribute perhaps to the learning of Dr. Hoadly, the Bishop of Salisbury during his courtship of Charlotte Cradock.

Dr. Harrison's parish, which became the scene of the lieutenant's experiments in farming, has always been identified with Fielding's own East Stour. Booth's description of it, though not very definite, fits well enough the Stour valley. The parish lay, he told Miss Mathews, "among meadows washed by a clear trout stream, and flanked on both sides with downs." As his curate was at that time unmarried, Dr. Harrison let the Booths have the parsonage, where they settled down to a delicious life in the cultivation of the doctor's glebe. The earthly paradise, however, was of short duration. At the end of the first prosperous year, Booth rented an adjoining farm, paying for it several times over what it was worth, in the hope of increasing his income; subsequently he purchased an old coach for the convenience of Amelia; and when the curate married an ill-natured wife, they were taken into the parsonage. By these follies the family was ruined. Debts accumulated; the coach excited the envy of neighbours; and the curate's wife was a disturbance to domestic tran

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quillity. The climax came at the end of the fourth year, when Booth's landlord seized all his stock for rent; and the poor lieutenant was forced to choose between a prison and flight. Preferring freedom, he took the road to London. This disaster should not be accepted as autobiography. Fielding was married in November, 1734, and disposed of his property at East Stour in 1738. During these scant four years, East Stour was probably his legal home; at least he described himself as of this parish when he entered the Middle Temple in November, 1737. A large part of this time, however, was passed in London. Such farming projects as he undertook may have been unsuccessful; but the cultivation of the soil was never a serious occupation with him. His aim was a London career in law or literature. His farm was only a place for retirement in summer and autumn. As he had been known in the parish ever since he was a boy, it is most improbable that his old friends and former playmates quarrelled with him and cheated him or sought to drive him away. While at East Stour, he lived in a house that had formerly been the parsonage, but it was not shared with a curate's family, for the Rev. William Young resided at Gillingham. When Fielding sold his farm and went to London, his immediate purpose was not to escape debts, but to study law. The curate of the parish, far from disliking him, followed him to London and attached himself to him for life.

My impression from the narrative is that Fielding was thinking of his father's life at East Stour quite as much as of his own. Edmund Fielding, when a colonel without a regiment, was installed by his father-in-law in the parsonage, much as was Booth by Dr. Harrison, and entered upon the career of a gentleman farmer. He purchased other lands, became involved in litigation, and eventually was forced to leave the parish for the more congenial atmosphere of London. If we combine the experiences of father

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