Chapter 9
One of the points on which Miss Bronte does not touch,--at all events does not touch in those portions of her correspondence which have been printed,--is the marriage with which _Esmond_ closes. Upon this event it would have been highly instructive to have had her views, especially as it appears to have greatly exercised her contemporaries, the first reviewers. It was the gravamen of the _Times_ indictment; to the critic of _Fraser_ it was highly objectionable; and the _Examiner_ regarded it as "incredible." Why it was "incredible" that a man should marry a woman seven years older than himself, to whom he had already proposed once in vol. ii., and of whose youthful appearance we are continually reminded ("she looks the sister of her daughter" says the old Dowager at Chelsea), is certainly not superficially obvious. Nor was it obvious to Lady Castlewood's children, "Mother's in love with you,--yes, I think mother's in love with you," says downright Frank Esmond; the only impediment in his eyes being the bar sinister, as yet unremoved. And Miss Beatrix herself, in vol. iii., is even more roundly explicit. "As for you," she tells Esmond, "you want a woman to bring your slippers and cap, and to sit at your feet, and cry 'O caro! O bravo!' whilst you read your Shakespeares, and Miltons, and stuff" [which shows that she herself had read Swift's _Grand Question Debated_]. "Mamma would have been the wife for you, had you been a little older, though you look ten years older than she does," "You do, you glum-faced, blue-bearded, little old man!" adds this very imperious and free-spoken young lady. The situation is, no doubt, at times extremely difficult, and naturally requires consummate skill in the treatment. But if these things and others signify anything to an intelligent reader, they signify that the author, if he had not his end steadily in view, knew perfectly well that his story was tending in one direction. There will probably always be some diversity of opinion in the matter; but the majority of us have accepted Thackeray's solution, and have dropped out of sight that hint of undesirable rivalry, which so troubled the precisians of the early Victorian age. To those who read _Esmond_ now, noting carefully the almost imperceptible transformation of the motives on either side, as developed by the evolution of the story, the union of the hero and heroine at the end must appear not only credible but preordained. And that the gradual progress towards this foregone conclusion is handled with unfailing tact and skill, there can surely be no question.[67]
Note:
[67} Thackeray's own explanation was more characteristic than convincing. "Why did you"--said once to him impetuous Mrs. John Brown of Edinburgh--"Why did you make Esmond marry that old woman?" "My dear lady," he replied, "it was not I who married them. They married themselves." (Dr. _John Brmon_, by the late John Taylor Brown, 1903, pp. 96-7.)
Of the historical portraits in the book, the interest has, perhaps, at this date, a little paled. Not that they are one whit less vigorously alive than when the author first put them in motion; but they have suffered from the very attention which _Esmond_ and _The Humourists_ have directed to the study of the originals. The picture of Marlborough is still as effective as when it was first proclaimed to be good enough for the brush of Saint-Simon. But Thackeray himself confessed to a family prejudice against the hero of Blenheim, and later artists have considerably readjusted the likeness. Nor in all probability would the latest biographer of Bolingbroke endorse _that_ presentment. In the purely literary figures, Thackeray naturally followed the _Lectures_, and is consequently open to the same criticisms as have been offered on those performances. The Swift of _The Humourists_, modelled on Macaulay, was never accepted from the first; and it has not been accepted in the novel, or by subsequent writers from Forster onwards.[68] Addison has been less studied; and his likeness has consequently been less questioned. Concerning Steele there has been rather more discussion. That Thackeray's sketch is very vivid, very human, and in most essentials, hard to disprove, must be granted. But it is obviously conceived under the domination of the "poor Dick" of Addison, and dwells far too persistently upon Steele's frailer and more fallible aspect. No one would believe that the flushed personage in the full-bottomed periwig, who hiccups Addison's _Campaign_ in the Haymarket garret, or the fuddled victim of "Prue's" curtain lecture at Hampton, ranked, at the date of the story, far higher than Addison as a writer, and that he was, in spite of his faults, not only a kindly gentleman and scholar, but a philanthropist, a staunch patriot, and a consistent politician. Probably the author of _Esmond_ considered that, in a mixed character, to be introduced incidentally, and exhibited naturally "in the quotidian undress and relaxation of his mind" (as Lamb says), anything like biographical big drum should be deprecated. This is, at least, the impression left on us by an anecdote told by Elwin. He says that Thackeray, talking to him once about _The Virginians_, which was then appearing, announced that he meant, among other people, to bring in Goldsmith, "representing him as he really was, a little, shabby, mean, shuffling Irishman." These are given as Thackeray's actual words. If so, they do not show the side of Goldsmith which is shown in the last lecture of _The Humourists._[69]
Notes:
[68] Thackeray heartily disliked Swift, and said so. "As for Swift, you haven't made me alter my opinion"--he replied to Hannay's remonstrances. This feeling was intensified by the belief that Swift, as a clergyman, was insincere. "Of course,"--he wrote in September, 1851, in a letter now in the British Museum,--"any man is welcome to believe as he likes for me _except_ a parson; and I can't help looking upon Swift and Sterne as a couple of traitors and renegades ... with a scornful pity for them in spite of all their genius and greatness."
[69] _Some XVIII. Century Men of Letters_, 1902, i. 187. The intention was never carried out. In _The King over the Water_, 1908, Miss A. Shield and Mr. Andrew Lang have recently examined another portrait in _Esmond_,--that of the Chevalier de St. George,--not without injury to its historical veracity. In these matters, Mr. Lang--like Rob Roy--is on his native heath; and it is only necessary to refer the reader to this highly interesting study.
But although, with our rectified information, we may except against the picture of Steele as a man, we can scarcely cavil at the reproduction of his manner as a writer. Even when Thackeray was a boy at Charterhouse, his imitative faculty had been exceptional; and he displayed it triumphantly in his maturity by those _Novels by Eminent Hands_ in which the authors chosen are at once caricatured and criticised. The thing is more than the gift of parody; it amounts (as Mr. Frederic Harrison has rightly said) to positive forgery. It is present in all his works, in stray letters and detached passages.
In its simplest form it is to be found in the stiff, circumstantial report of the seconds in the duel at Boulogne in _Denis Duval_; and in the missive in barbarous French of the Dowager Viscountess Castlewood[70]--a letter which only requires the sprawling, childish script to make it an exact facsimile of one of the epistolary efforts of that "baby-faced" Caroline beauty who was accustomed to sign herself "L duchesse de Portsmout." It is better still in the letter from Walpole to General Conway in chap. xl. of _The Virginians_, which is perfect, even to the indifferent pun of sleepy (and overrated) George Selwyn. But the crown and top of these _pastiches_ is certainly the delightful paper, which pretends to be No. 341 of the _Spectator_ for All Fools' Day, 1712, in which Colonel Esmond treats "Mistress Jocasta-Beatrix," to what, in the parlance of the time, was decidedly a "bite."[71] Here Thackeray has borrowed not only Steele's voice, but his very trick of speech. It is, however, a fresh instance of the "tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive," that although this pseudo-_Spectator_ is stated to have been printed "exactly as those famous journals were printed" for eighteenth-century breakfast-tables, it could hardly, owing to one microscopic detail, have deceived the contemporary elect. For Mr, Esmond, to his very apposite Latin epigraph, unluckily appended an English translation,--a concession to the country gentlemen from which both Addison and Steele deliberately abstained, holding that their distinctive mottoes were (in Addison's own phrase) "words to the wise," of no concern to unlearned persons.[72]
Notes:
[70] _Esmond_, Book ii, chap, ii.
[71] _Ib_. Book iii, chap, iii.
[72] _Spectator_, No. 221, November 13, 1711.
This very minute trifle emphasises the pitfalls of would-be perfect imitation. But it also serves to bring us finally to the vocabulary of _Esmond_. As to this, extravagant pretensions have sometimes been advanced. It has been asserted, for instance, by a high journalistic authority, that "no man, woman, or child in _Esmond_, ever says anything that he or she might not have said in the reign of Queen Anne." This is one of those extreme utterances in which enthusiasm, losing its head, invites contradiction. Thackeray professedly "copied the language of Queen Anne,"--he says so in his dedication to Lord Ashburton; but he himself would certainly never have put forward so comprehensive a claim as the above. There is no doubt a story that he challenged Mr. Lowell (who was his fellow-passenger to America on the _Canada_) to point out in _Esmond_ a word which had not been used in the early eighteenth century; and that the author of _The Biglow Papers_ promptly discovered such a word. But even if the anecdote be not well-invented, the invitation must have been more jest than earnest. For none knew better than Thackeray that these barren triumphs of wording belong to ingenuity rather than genius, being exercises altogether in the taste of the Persian poet who left out all the A's (as well as the poetry) in his verses, or of that other French funambulist whose sonnet in honour of Anne de Montaut was an acrostic, a mesostic, a St. Andrew's Cross, a lozenge,--everything, in short, but a sonnet. What Thackeray endeavoured after when "copying the language of Queen Anne," and succeeded in attaining, was the spirit and tone of the time. It was not pedantic philology at which he aimed, though he did not disdain occasional picturesque archaisms, such as "yatches" for "yachts," or despise the artful aid of terminal k's, long s's, and old-cut type. Consequently, as was years ago pointed out by Fitzedward Hall (whose manifest prejudice against Thackeray as a writer should not blind us in a matter of fact), it is not difficult to detect many expressions in the memoirs of Queen Anne's Colonel which could never have been employed until Her Majesty had long been "quietly inurned." What is more,--if we mistake not,--the author of _Esmond_ sometimes refrained from using an actual eighteenth-century word, even in a quotation, when his instinct told him it was not expedient to do so. In the original of that well-known anecdote of Steele beside his father's coffin, In _Tatler_ No. 181, reproduced in book i. chap. vi. of the novel, Steele says, "My mother catched me in her arms." "Catched" is good enough eighteenth-century for Johnson and Walpole. But Thackeray made it "caught," and "caught" it remains to this day both in _Esmond_ and _The Humourists_.
A MILTONIC EXERCISE
(TERCENTENARY, 1608-1908)
"Stops of various Quills."--LYCIDAS.
What need of votive Verse To strew thy _Laureat Herse_ With that mix'd _Flora_ of th' _Aonian Hill_? Or _Mincian_ vocall Reed, That _Cam_ and _Isis_ breed, When thine own Words are burning in us still?
_Bard, Prophet, Archimage!_ In this Cash-cradled Age, We grate our scrannel Musick, and we dote: Where is the Strain unknown, Through Bronze or Silver blown, That thrill'd the Welkin with thy woven Note?
Yes,--"we are selfish Men": Yet would we once again Might see _Sabrina_ braid her amber Tire;
Or watch the _Comus_ Crew Sweep down the Glade; or view Strange-streamer'd Craft from _Javan_ or _Gadire_!
Or could we catch once more, High up, the Clang and Roar Of Angel Conflict,--Angel Overthrow; Or, with a World begun, Behold the young-ray'd Sun Flame in the Groves where the _Four Rivers_ go!
Ay me, I fondly dream! Only the Storm-bird's Scream Foretells of Tempest in the Days to come; Nowhere is heard up-climb The lofty lyric Rhyme, And the "God-gifted Organ-voice" is dumb.[73]
Note:
[73] Written, by request, for the celebration at Christ's College, Cambridge, July 10, 1908.
FRESH FACTS ABOUT FIELDING
The general reader, as a rule, is but moderately interested in minor rectifications. Secure in a conventional preference of the spirit to the letter, he professes to be indifferent whether the grandmother of an exalted personage was a "Hugginson" or a "Blenkinsop"; and he is equally careless as to the correct Christian names of his cousins and his aunts. In the main, the general reader is wise in his generation. But with the painful biographer, toiling in the immeasurable sand of thankless research, often foot-sore and dry of throat, these trivialities assume exaggerated proportions; and to those who remind him--as in a cynical age he is sure to be reminded--of the infinitesimal value of his hard-gotten grains of information, he can only reply mournfully, if unconvincingly, that fact is fact--even in matters of mustard-seed. With this prelude, I propose to set down one or two minute points concerning Henry Fielding, not yet comprised in any existing records of his career.[74]
Note:
[74] Since this was published in April 1907, they have been embodied in an Appendix to my "Men of Letters" _Fielding_; and used, to some extent, for a fresh edition of the _Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon_ ("World's Classics").
The first relates to the exact period of his residence at Leyden University. His earliest biographer, Arthur Murphy, writing in 1762, is more explicit than usual on this topic. "He [Fielding]," says Murphy, "went from Eton to Leyden, and there continued to show an eager thirst for knowledge, and to study the civilians with a remarkable application for about two years, when, remittances failing, he was obliged to return to London, not then quite twenty years old" [_i.e._ before 22nd April, 1727]. In 1883, like my predecessors, I adopted this statement, for the sufficient reason that I had nothing better to put in its place. And Murphy should have been well-informed. He had known Fielding personally; he was employed by Fielding's publisher; and he could, one would imagine, have readily obtained accurate data from Fielding's surviving sister, Sarah, who was only three years younger than her brother, of whose short life (he died at forty-eight) she could scarcely have forgotten the particulars. Murphy's story, moreover, exactly fitted in with the fact, only definitely made known in June 1883, that Fielding, as a youth of eighteen, had endeavoured, in November 1725, to abduct or carry off his first love, Miss Sarah Andrew of Lyme Regis. Although the lady was promptly married to a son of one of her fluttered guardians, nothing seemed more reasonable than to assume that the disappointed lover (one is sure he was never an heiress-hunter!) was despatched to the Dutch University to keep him out of mischief.[75] But in once more examining Mr. Keightley's posthumous papers, kindly placed at my disposal by his nephew, Mr. Alfred C. Lyster, I found a reference to an un-noted article in the _Cornhill Magazine_ for November, 1863 (from internal evidence I believe it to have been written by James Hannay), entitled "A Scotchman in Holland." Visiting Leyden, the writer was permitted to inspect the University Album; and he found, under 1728, the following:--"_Henricus Fielding, Anglus, Ann. 20. Stud. Lit._", coupled with the further detail that he "was living at the 'Hotel of Antwerp.'" Except in the item of "_Stud. Lit._", this did not seem to conflict materially with Murphy's account, as Fielding was nominally twenty from 1727 to 1728, and small discrepancies must be allowed for.
Note:
[75] "Men of Letters" _Fielding_, 1907, Appendix I.
Twenty years later, a fresh version of the record came to light. At their tercentenary festival in 1875, tne Leyden University printed a list of their students from their foundation to that year. From this Mr. Edward Peacock, F.S.A., compiled in 1883, for the Index Society, an _Index to English-Speaking Students who have graduated at Leyden University_; and at p. 35 appears _Fielding, Henricus, Anglus_, 16 Mart. 1728, 915 (the last being the column number of the list). This added a month-date, and made Fielding a graduate. Then, two years ago, came yet a third rendering. Mr. A.E.H. Swaen, writing in _The Modern Language Review_ for July 1906, printed the inscription in the Album as follows; "Febr. 16. 1728: Rectore Johanne Wesselio, Henricus Fielding, Anglus. 20, L." Mr. Swaen construed this to mean that, on the date named (which, it may be observed, is not Mr. Peacock's date), Fielding, "aged twenty, was _entered_ as _litterarum studiosus_ at Leyden." In this case it would follow that his residence in Holland should have come after February 16th, 1728; and Mr. Swaen went on to conjecture that, "as his [Fielding's] first play, _Love in Several Masques_, was staged at Drury Lane in February, 1728, and his next play, _The Temple Beau_, was produced in January, 1730, it is not improbable that his residence in Holland filled up the interval or part of it. Did the profits of the play [he proceeded] perhaps cover part of his travelling expenses?"
The new complications imported into the question by this fresh aspect of it, will be at once apparent. Up to 1875 there had been but one Fielding on the Leyden books; so that all these differing accounts were variations from a single source. In this difficulty, I was fortunate enough to enlist the sympathy of Mr. Frederic Harrison, who most kindly undertook to make inquiries on my behalf at Leyden University itself. In reply to certain definite queries drawn up by me, he obtained from the distinguished scholar and Professor of History, Dr. Pieter Blok, the following authoritative particulars. The exact words in the original _Album Academicum_ are:--"16 Martii 1728 Henricus Fielding, Anglus, annor. 20 Litt. Stud." He was then staying at the "Casteel van Antwerpen"--as related by "A Scotchman in Holland." His name only occurs again in the yearly _recensiones_ under February 22nd, 1729, as "Henricus Fieldingh," when he was domiciled with one Jan Oson. He must consequently have left Leyden before February 8th, 1730, February 8th being the birthday of the University, after which all students have to be annually registered. The entry in the Album (as Mr. Swaen affirmed) is an _admission_ entry; there are no leaving entries. As regards "studying the civilians," Fielding might, in those days, Dr. Blok explains, have had private lessons from the professors; but he could not have studied in the University without being on the books. To sum up: After producing _Love in Several Masques_ at Drury Lane, probably on February 12th, I728,[76] Fielding was admitted a "Litt. Stud." at Leyden University on March 16th; was still there in February 1729; and left before February 8th, 1730. Murphy is therefore at fault in almost every particular. Fielding did _not_ go from Eton to Leyden; he did _not_ make any recognised study of the civilians, "with remarkable application" or otherwise; and he did _not_ return to London before he was twenty. But it is by no means improbable that the _causa causans_ or main reason for his coming home was the failure of remittances.
Note:
[76] _Genest_, iii. 209.
Another recently established fact is also more or less connected with "Mur.--" as Johnson called him. In his "Essay" of 1762, he gave a highly-coloured account of Fielding's first marriage, and of the promptitude with which, assisted by yellow liveries and a pack of hounds, he managed to make duck and drake of his wife's little fortune. This account has now been "simply riddled in its details" (as Mr. Saintsbury puts it) by successive biographers, the last destructive critic being the late Sir Leslie Stephen, who plausibly suggested that the "yellow liveries" (not the family liveries, be it noted!) were simply a confused recollection of the fantastic pranks of that other and earlier Beau Fielding (Steele's "Orlando the Fair"), who married the Duchess of Cleveland in 1705, and was also a Justice of the Peace for Westminster. One thing was wanting to the readjustment of the narrative, and that was the precise date of Fielding's marriage to the beautiful Miss Cradock of Salisbury, the original both of Sophia Western and Amelia Booth. By good fortune this has now been ascertained. Lawrence gave the date as 1735; and Keightley suggested the spring of that year. This, as Swift would say, was near the mark, although confirmation has been slow in coming. In June 1906, Mr. Thomas S. Bush, of Bath, announced in _The Bath Chronicle_ that the desired information was to be found (not in the Salisbury registers which had been fruitlessly consulted, but) at the tiny church of St. Mary, Charlcombe, a secluded parish about one and a half miles north of Bath. Here is the record:--"November y'e 28, 1734. Henry Fielding of y'e Parish of St. James in Bath, Esq., and Charlotte Cradock, of y'e same Parish, spinster, were married by virtue of a licence from y'e Court of Wells." All lovers of Fielding owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Bush, whose researches, in addition, disclosed the fact that Sarah Fielding, the novelist's third sister (as we shall see presently), was buried, not in Bath Abbey, where Dr. John Hoadly raised a memorial to her, but "in y'e entrance of the Chancel [of Charlcombe Church] close to y'e Rector's seat," April 14th, 1768.[77] Mr. Bush's revelation, it may be added, was made in connection with another record of the visits of the novelist to the old Queen of the West, a tablet erected in June 1906 to Fielding and his sister on the wall of Yew Cottage, now renovated as Widcombe Lodge, Widcombe, Bath, where they once resided.
Note:
[77] Sarah Fielding's epitaph in Bath Abbey is often said to have been written by Bishop Benjamin Hoadly. In this case, it must have been anticipatory (like Dr. Primrose's on his Deborah), for the Bishop died in 1761.
In the last case I have to mention, it is but fair to Murphy to admit that he seems to have been better informed than those who have succeeded him. Richardson writes of being "well acquainted" with four of Fielding's sisters, and both Lawrence and Keightley refer to a Catherine and an Ursula, of whom Keightley, after prolonged enquiries, could obtain no tidings. With the help of Colonel W.F. Prideaux, and the kind offices of Mr. Samuel Martin of the Hammersmith Free Library, this matter has now been set at rest. In 1887 Sir Leslie Stephen had suggested to me that Catherine and Ursula were most probably born at Sharpham Park, before the Fieldings moved to East Stour. This must have been the case, though Keightley had failed to establish it. At all events, Catherine and Ursula must have existed, for they both died in 1750, The Hammersmith Registers at Fulham record the following burials:--
1750 July 9th, Mrs. Catherine Feilding (_sic_) 1750 Nov. 12th, Mrs. Ursula Fielding 1750 [--1] Feb'y. 24th, Mrs. Beatrice Fielding 1753 May 10th, Louisa, d. of Henry Fielding, Esq.