Henry Fielding: a Memoir: Including Newly Discovered Letters and Records with Illustrations from Contemporary PrintsGodden, G. M. (Gertrude M.)
General
Henry Fielding: a Memoir: Including Newly Discovered Letters and Records with Illustrations from Contemporary Prints
Godden, G. M. (Gertrude M.)
Authors, English -- 18th century -- Biography; Fielding, Henry, 1707-1754; Fielding, Henry, 1707-1754 -- Correspondence
Sarah Fielding's name occurs again as living with her brother in that
house in Beaufort Buildings with which is associated perhaps the happiest
instance of Fielding's warm-hearted generosity. The story may be given as
nearly as possible in the words of the narrator, one G. S., writing from
Harley Street in 1786. After speaking of the conspicuous good nature of
"the late Harry Fielding," G. S. says: "His receipts were never large, and
his pocket was an open bank for distress and friendship at all times to
draw on. Marked by such a liberality of mind it is not to be wondered at
if he was frequently under pecuniary embarrassments.... Some parochial
taxes for his house in Beaufort Buildings being unpaid, and for which he
had been demanded again and again [we may remember how Mr. Luckless' door
was "almost beat down with duns"]...he was at last given to understand by
the collector who had an esteem for him, that he could procrastinate the
payment no longer." To a bookseller, therefore he addressed himself, and
mortgaged the coming sheets of some work then in hand. He received the
cash, some ten or twelve guineas, and was returning home, full freighted
with this sum, when, in the Strand, within a few yards of his own house,
he met an old college chum whom he had not seen for many years. "Harry
felt the enthusiasm of friendship; an hundred interrogatives were put to
him in a moment as where had he been? where was he going? how did he do?
&c. &c. His friend told him in reply he had long been buffeting the waves
of adverse fortunes, but never could surmount them." Fielding took him off
to dine at a neighbouring tavern, and as they talked, becoming acquainted
with the state of his friend's pocket, emptied his own into it; and a
little before dawn, he turned homewards "greater and happier than a
monarch." Arrived at Beaufort Buildings his sister, who had anxiously
awaited him, reported that the collector had called for the taxes twice
that day. "Friendship," answered Harry Fielding "has called for the money
and had it;--let the collector call again." Well might his cousin Lady
Mary say of the man of whom such a story could be told, "I am persuaded he
has known more happy moments than any prince upon earth."
During the summer following Warton's visit to the brother and sister,
Fielding published a _Dialogue between an Alderman and a Courtier_. And in
the following November his second marriage took place, at the little City
church of St Bene't's, Paul's Wharf. The story of this marriage cannot be
better told than in the words of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's
granddaughter, Lady Louisa Stuart, quoting from the personal knowledge of
her mother and grandmother:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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