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
It is these youthful love-verses, verses as he himself was the first to
admit, that were 'indeed Productions of the Heart rather than the Head,'
that afford our only record of Fielding's wooing. Thus, he sings his
passion for _Celia_ in the declaration
"I hate the Town, and all its Ways;
Ridotto's, Opera's, and Plays;
The Ball, the Ring, the Mall, the Court;
Where ever 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,"
in short, the whole world 'cram'd all together,' because all his heart is
engrossed for Celia. Again, Cupid is called to account, in that the
careless urchin had left Celia's house unguarded from thieves, save for
an old fellow "who sat up all Night, with a Gun without any Ammunition."
Celia, it seems, had apprehended robbery, and her poet's rest is troubled:
"For how should I Repose enjoy,
While any fears your Breast annoy?
Forbid it Heav'n, that I should be
From any of your Troubles free."
Cupid explains his desertion by ingeniously declaring that a sigh from
Celia had blown him away
"_to Harry Fielding's breast_,"
in which lodging the 'wicked Child' wrought unconscionable havoc. Again,
Celia wishes to have a "Lilliputian to play with," so she is promptly
told that her lover would doff five feet of his tall stature, to meet her
pleasure, and
"Then when my Celia walks abroad
I'd be her pocket's little Load:
Or sit astride, to frighten People,
Upon her Hat's new fashion'd Steeple."
Nay, to be prized by Celia, who would not even take the form of her
faithful dog Quadrille.
Jove, we may remember, had dowered the lovely Miss Cradocks with minds as
fair as their persons; and the excellence of Celia's understanding is
again celebrated in a neatly turned verse upon her 'having blamed Mr Gay
for his Severity on her Sex.' Had other women known a tenderness like
hers, cries the poet, Gay's darts had returned into his own bosom; and
last of all should such blame come from her
"in whose accomplish'd Mind
The strongest Satire on thy Sex we find."
The love story that first ran to such pleasant rhymes, in the old
cathedral town, was destined to know many a harsh chapter of poverty and
sickness; but throughout it all the affection of the lovers remained
true; and there is no reason to doubt that, had it been in Harry
Fielding's power to achieve it, the promise of perhaps the most charming
of his love verses would have been fulfilled:
"Can there on Earth, my _Celia_, be,
A Price I would not pay for thee?
Yes, one dear precious Tear of thine
Should not be shed to make thee mine."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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