The Intriguing Chambermaid was produced on the 15th of January 1734. Lettice, from whom the piece was named, was well personated by Mrs. Clive, and Colonel Bluff by Macklin, the only actor of any promise that Highmore had been able to secure. With the new comedy the Author’s Farce was revived. It would be unnecessary to refer to this again, but for the additions that were made to it. These consisted chiefly in the substitution of Marplay Junior for Sparkish, the actor-manager of the first version. The death of Wilks may have been a reason for this alteration; but a stronger was no doubt the desire to throw ridicule upon Theophilus Cibber, whose behaviour in deserting Drury Lane immediately after his father had sold his share to Highmore had not passed without censure, nor had his father’s action escaped sarcastic comment. Theophilus Cibber — whose best part was Beaumont and Fletcher’s Copper Captain, and who carried the impersonation into private life, had played in several of Fielding’s pieces; but Fielding had linked his fortunes to those of the patentees, and was consequently against the players in this quarrel. The following scene was accordingly added to the farce for the exclusive benefit of “Young Marplay”: —
“Marplay junior. Mr. Luckless, I kiss your Hands — Sir, I am your most obedient humble Servant; you see, Mr. Luckless, what Power you have over me. I attend your Commands, tho’ several Persons of Quality have staid at Court for me above this Hour.
Luckless. I am obliged to you — I have a Tragedy for your House, Mr. Marplay.
Mar. jun. Ha! if you will send it me, I will give you my Opinion of it; and if I can make any Alterations in it that will be for its Advantage, I will do it freely.
Witmore. Alterations, Sir?
Mar. jun. Yes, Sir, Alterations — I will maintain it, let a Play be never so good, without Alteration it will do nothing.
Wit. Very odd indeed.
Mar. jun. Did you ever write, Sir?
Wit. No, Sir, I thank Heav’n.
Mar. jun. Oh! your humble Servant — your very humble Servant, Sir. When you write yourself you will find the Necessity of Alterations. Why, Sir, wou’d you guess that I had alter’d Shakespear?
Wit. Yes, faith, Sir, no one sooner.
Mar. jun. Alack-a-day! Was you to see the Plays when they are brought to us — a Parcel of crude, undigested Stuff. We are the Persons, Sir, who lick them into Form, that mould them into Shape — The Poet make the Play indeed! The Colour-man might be as well said to make the Picture, or the Weaver the Coat: My Father and I, Sir, are a Couple of poetical Tailors; when a Play is brought us, we consider it as a Tailor does his Coat, we cut it, Sir, we cut it: And let me tell you, we have the exact Measure of the Town, we know how to fit their Taste. The Poets, between you and me, are a Pack of ignorant —
Wit. Hold, hold, sir. This is not quite so civil to Mr. Luckless: Besides, as I take it, you have done the Town the Honour of writing yourself.
Mar. jun. Sir, you are a Man of Sense; and express yourself well. I did, as you say, once make a small Sally into Parnassus, took a sort of flying Leap over Helicon: But if ever they catch me there again — Sir, the Town have a Prejudice to my Family; for if any Play you’d have made them ashamed to damn it, mine must. It was all over Plot. It wou’d have made half a dozen Novels: Nor was it cram’d with a pack of Wit- traps, like Congreve and Wycherly, where every one knows when the Joke was coming. I defy the sharpest Critick of ‘em all to know when any Jokes of mine were coming. The Dialogue was plain, easy, and natural, and not one single Joke in it from the Beginning to the End: Besides, Sir, there was one Scene of tender melancholy Conversation, enough to have melted a Heart of Stone; and yet they damn’d it: And they damn’d themselves; for they shall have no more of mine.
Wit. Take pity on the Town, Sir.
Mar. jun. I! No, Sir, no. I’ll write no more. No more; unless I am forc’d to it.
Luckless. That’s no easy thing, Marplay.
Mar. jun. Yes, Sir. Odes, Odes, a Man may be oblig’d to write those you know.” These concluding lines plainly refer to the elder Cibber’s appointment as Laureate in 1730, and to those “annual Birth-day Strains,” with which he so long delighted the irreverent; while the alteration of Shakespeare and the cobbling of plays generally, satirised again in a later scene, are strictly in accordance with contemporary accounts of the manners and customs of the two dictators of Drury Lane. The piece indicated by Marplay Junior was probably Theophilus Cibber’s Lover, which had been produced in January 1731 with very moderate success.
After the Intriguing Chambermaid and the revived Author’s Farce, Fielding seems to have made farther exertions for “the distressed Actors in Drury Lane.” He had always been an admirer of Cervantes, frequent references to whose master-work are to be found scattered through his plays; and he now busied himself with completing and expanding the loose scenes of the comedy of Don Quixote in England, which (as before stated) he had sketched at Leyden for his own diversion. He had already thought of bringing it upon the stage, but had been dissuaded from doing so by Cibber and Booth, who regarded it as wanting in novelty. Now, however, he strengthened it by the addition of some election scenes, in which — he tells Lord Chesterfield in the dedication — he designed to give a lively representation of “the Calamities brought on a Country by general Corruption;” and it was duly rehearsed. But unexpected delays took place in its production; the revolted players returned to Drury Lane; and, lest the actors’ benefits should further retard its appearance by postponing it until the winter season, Fielding transferred it to the Haymarket, where, according to Geneste, it was acted in April 1734. As a play, Don Quixote in England has few stage qualities and no plot to speak of. But the Don with his whimsies, and Sancho with his appetite and string of proverbs, are conceived in something of the spirit of Cervantes. Squire Badger, too, a rudimentary Squire Western, well represented by Macklin, is vigorously drawn; and the song of his huntsman Scut, beginning with the fine line “The dusky Night rides down the Sky,” has a verse that recalls a practice of which Addison accuses Sir Roger de Coverley: —
”A brushing Fox in yonder Wood,
Secure to find we seek;
For why, I carry’d sound and good,
A Cartload there last Week.
And a Hunting we will go.”
The election scenes, though but slightly attached to the main story, are keenly satirical, and considering that Hogarth’s famous series of kindred prints belongs to a much later date, must certainly have been novel, as may be gathered from the following little colloquy between Mr. Mayor and Messrs. Guzzle and Retail: —
“Mayor (to Retail) ….I like an Opposition, because otherwise a Man may be oblig’d to vote against his Party; therefore when we invite a Gentleman to stand, we invite him to spend his Money for the Honour of his Party; and when both Parties have spent as much as they are able, every honest Man will vote according to his Conscience.
Guz. Mr. Mayor talks like a Man of Sense and Honour, and it does me good to hear him.
May. Ay, ay, Mr. Guzzle, I never gave a Vote contrary to my Conscience. I have very earnestly recommended the Country-Interest to all my Brethren: But before that, I recommended the Town-Interest, that is, the interest of this Corporation; and first of all I recommended to every particular Man to take a particular Care of himself. And it is with a certain way of Reasoning, That he who serves me best, will serve the Town best; and he that serves the Town best, will serve the Country best.”
In the January and February of 1735 Fielding produced two more pieces at Drury Lane, a farce and a five-act comedy. The farce — a lively trifle enough — was An Old Man taught Wisdom, a title subsequently changed to the Virgin Unmasked. It was obviously written to display the talents of Mrs. Clive, who played in it her favourite character of a hoyden, and, after “interviewing” a number of suitors chosen by her father, finally ran away with Thomas the footman — a course in those days not without its parallel in high life, above stairs as well as below. It appears to have succeeded, though Bookish, one of the characters,
was entirely withdrawn in deference to some disapprobation on the part of the audience; while the part of Wormwood, a lawyer, which is found in the latest editions, is said to have been “omitted in representation.” The comedy, entitled The Universal Gallant; or, The different Husbands, was scarcely so fortunate. Notwithstanding that Quin, who, after an absence of many years, had returned to Drury Lane, played a leading part, and that Theophilus Cibber in the hero, Captain Smart, seems to have been fitted with a character exactly suited to his talents and idiosyncrasy, the play ran no more than three nights. Till the third act was almost over, “the Audience,” says the Prompter (as quoted by “Sylvanus Urban”), “sat quiet, in hopes it would mend, till finding it grew worse and worse, they lost all Patience, and not an Expression or Sentiment afterwards pass’d without its deserved Censure.” Perhaps it is not to be wondered at that the author— “the prolifick Mr. Fielding,” as the Prompter calls him, attributed its condemnation to causes other than its lack of interest. In his Advertisement he openly complains of the “cruel Usage” his “poor Play” had met with, and of the barbarity of the young men about town who made “a Jest of damning Plays” — a pastime which, whether it prevailed in this case or not, no doubt existed, as Sarah Fielding afterwards refers to it in David Simple. If an author — he goes on to say— “be so unfortunate [as] to depend on the success of his Labours for his Bread, he must be an inhuman Creature indeed, who would out of sport and wantonness prevent a Man from getting a Livelihood in an honest and inoffensive Way, and make a jest of starving him and his Family.” The plea is a good one if the play is good; but if not, it is worthless. In this respect the public are like the French Cardinal in the story; and when the famished writer’s work fails to entertain them, they are fully justified in doubting his raison d’etre. There is no reason for supposing that the Universal Gallant deserved a better fate than it met with.
Judging from the time which elapsed between the production of this play and that of Pasquin (Fielding’s next theatrical venture), it has been conjectured that the interval was occupied by his marriage, and brief experience as a Dorsetshire country gentleman. The exact date of his marriage is not known, though it is generally assumed to have taken place in the beginning of 1735. But it may well have been earlier, for it will be observed that in the above quotation from the Preface to the Universal Gallant, which is dated from “Buckingham Street, Feb. 12,” he indirectly speaks of “his family.” This, it is true, may be no more than the pious fraud of a bachelor; but if it be taken literally, we must conclude that his marriage was already so far a thing of the past that he was already a father. This supposition would account for the absence of any record of the birth of a child during his forthcoming residence at East Stour, by the explanation that it had already happened in London; and it is not impossible that the entry of the marriage, too, may be hidden away in some obscure Metropolitan parish register, since those of Salisbury have been fruitlessly searched. At this distance of time, however, speculation is fruitless; and, in default of more definite information, the “spring of 1735,” which Keightley gives, must be accepted as the probable date of the marriage.
Concerning the lady, the particulars are more precise. She was a Miss Charlotte Cradock, one of three sisters living upon their own means at Salisbury, or — as it was then styled — New Sarum. Mr. Keightley’s personal inquiries, circa 1858, elicited the information that the family, now extinct, was highly respectable, but not of New Sarum’s best society. Richardson, in one of his malevolent outbursts, asserted that the sisters were illegitimate; but, says the writer above referred to, “of this circumstance we have no other proof, and I am able to add that the tradition of Salisbury knows nothing of it.”
They were, however, celebrated for their personal attractions; and if the picture given in chap. ii. book iv. of Tom Jones accurately represents the first Mrs. Fielding, she must have been a most charming brunette. Something of the stereotyped characteristics of a novelist’s heroine obviously enter into the description; but the luxuriant black hair, which, cut “to comply with the modern Fashion,” “curled so gracefully in her Neck,” the lustrous eyes, the dimple in the right cheek, the chin rather full than small, and the complexion having “more of the Lilly than of the Rose,” but flushing with exercise or modesty, are, doubtless, accurately set down. In speaking of the nose as “exactly regular,” Fielding appears to have deviated slightly from the truth; for we learn from Lady Louisa Stuart that, in this respect, Miss Cradock’s appearance had “suffered a little” from an accident mentioned in book ii. of Amelia, the overturning of a chaise. Whether she also possessed the mental qualities and accomplishments which fell to the lot of Sophia Western, we have no means of determining; but Lady Stuart is again our authority for saying that she was as amiable as she was handsome.
From the love-poems in the first volume of the Miscellanies of 1743 — poems which their author declares to have been “Productions of the Heart rather than of the Head” — it is clear that Fielding had been attached to his future wife for several years previous to 1735. One of them, Advice to the Nymphs of New S —— m, celebrates the charms of Celia — the poetical equivalent for Charlotte — as early as 1730; another, containing a reference to the player Anthony Boheme, who died in 1731, was probably written at the same time; while a third, in which, upon the special intervention of Jove himself, the prize of beauty is decreed by Venus to the Salisbury sisters, may be of an earlier date than any. The year 1730 was the year of his third piece, the Author’s Farce, and he must therefore have been paying his addresses to Miss Cradock not very long after his arrival in London. This is a fact to be borne in mind. So early an attachment to a good and beautiful girl, living no farther off than Salisbury, where his own father probably resided, is scarcely consistent with the reckless dissipation which has been laid to his charge, although, on his own showing, he was by no means faultless. But it is a part of natures like his to exaggerate their errors in the moment of repentance; and it may well be that Henry Fielding, too, was not so black as he painted himself. Of his love-verses he says— “this Branch of Writing is what I very little pretend to;” and it would be misleading to rate them highly, for, unlike his literary descendant, Mr. Thackeray, he never attained to any special quality of note. But some of his octosyllabics, if they cannot be called equal to Prior’s, fall little below Swift’s. “I hate” — cries he in one of the pieces,
”I hate the Town, and all its Ways;
Ridotto’s, Opera’s, and Plays;
The Ball, the King, the Mall, the Court;
Wherever the Beau-Monde resort….
All Coffee-Houses, and their Praters;
All Courts of Justice, and Debaters;
All Taverns, and the Sots within ‘em;
All Bubbles, and the Rogues that skin ‘em,”
— and so forth, the natural anti-climax being that he loves nothing but his “Charmer” at Salisbury. In another, which is headed To Celia — Occasioned by her apprehending her House would be broke open, and having an old Fellow to guard it, who sat up all Night, with a Gun without any Ammunition, and from which it has been concluded that the Miss Cradocks were their own landlords, Venus chides Cupid for neglecting to guard her favourite: —
”’Come tell me, Urchin, tell no lies;
Where was you hid, in Vince’s eyes?
Did you fair Bennet’s Breast importune?
(I know you dearly love a Fortune.)’
Poor Cupid now began to whine;
’Mamma, it was no Fault of mine.
I in a Dimple lay perdue,
That little Guard-Room chose by you.
A hundred Loves (all arm’d) did grace
The Beauties of her Neck and Face;
Thence, by a Sigh I dispossest,
Was blown to Harry Fielding’s Breast;
Where I was forc’d all Night to stay,
Because I could not find my Way.
But did Mamma know there what Work
; I’ve made, how acted like a Turk;
What Pains, what Torment he endures,
Which no Physician ever cures,
She would forgive.’ The Goddess smil’d,
And gently chuck’d her wicked Child,
Bid him go back, and take more Care,
And give her Service to the Fair.”
Swift, in his Rhapsody on Poetry, 1733, coupled Fielding with Leonard Welsted as an instance of sinking in verse. But the foregoing, which he could not have seen, is scarcely, if at all, inferior to his own Birthday Poems to Stella. [Footnote: Swift afterwards substituted “the laureate [Cibber]” for “Fielding,” and appears to have changed his mind as to the latter’s merits. “I can assure Mr. Fielding,” says Mrs. Pilkington in the third and last volume of her Memoirs (1754), “the Dean had a high opinion of his Wit, which must be a Pleasure to him, as no Man was ever better qualified to judge, possessing it so eminently himself.”]
Complete Fictional Works of Henry Fielding Page 426
