Henry Fielding: A Memoir | Page 4

that, throughout all the vicissitudes of his life, he was ever a man of
breeding, no less than a man of wit. "His manners were so
gentlemanly," said his friend Mrs Hussey, "that even with the lower
classes with which he frequently condescended to chat, such as Sir
Roger de Coverley's old friends, the Vauxhall watermen, they seldom
outstepped the limits of propriety." And a similar recognition comes
from the hand of a great, and not too friendly, critic. To "the very last
days of his life," wrote Thackeray, "he retained a grandeur of air, and
although worn down by disease his aspect and presence imposed
respect on the people around him."
This Denbigh ancestry recalls a pleasant example of Fielding's wit,
preserved in a story told by his son, and recorded in the pages of that
voluminous eighteenth-century anecdotist, John Nichols. "Henry
Fielding," says Nichols, "being once in company with the Earl of
Denbigh, and the conversation's turning on Fielding's being of the
Denbigh family, the Earl asked the reason why they spelt their names
differently; the Earl's family doing it with the E first (Feilding), and Mr
Henry Fielding with the I first (Fielding). 'I cannot tell, my Lord,'
answered Harry, 'except it be that my branch of the family were the
first that knew how to spell.'"
In accordance with the fighting traditions of his race, Edmund Fielding
went into the army; his name appearing as an ensign in the 1st Foot
Guards. Also, as became a Fielding, he distinguished himself, we are
told, in the "Wars against France with much Bravery and Reputation";
and it was probably owing to active service abroad that the birth of his
eldest son took place in his wife's old Somersetshire home. The date
fits in well enough with the campaigns of Ramilies, Oudennarde and
Malplaquet. Soon after Henry's birth, however, his father had doubtless
left the Low Countries, for, about 1709, he appears as purchasing the

colonelcy of an Irish Regiment. This regiment was ordered, in 1710, to
Spain; but before that year the colonel and his wife and son had a
separate home provided for them, by the care of Sir Henry Gould. At
what precise date is uncertain, but some time before 1710, Sir Henry
had purchased an estate at East Stour in Dorsetshire, consisting of
farms and lands of the value of £4750, intending to settle some or the
whole of the same on his daughter and her children. And already,
according to a statement by the colonel, the old judge had placed his
son-in-law in possession of some or all of this purchase, sending him
oxen to plough his ground, and promising him a "Dairye of Cows." Sir
Henry moreover had, said his son-in-law, declared his intention "to
spend the vacant Remainder of his life," sometimes with his daughter,
her husband, and children at Stour, and sometimes with his son
Davidge, presumably at Sharpham. But in March, 1710, Sir Henry's
death frustrated his planned retirement in the Vale of Stour; although
three years later, in 1713, his intentions regarding a Dorsetshire home
for his daughter were carried out by the conveyance to her [3] and her
children of the Stour estate, for her sole enjoyment. The legal
documents are careful to recite that the rents and profits should be paid
to Mrs Fielding or her children, and her receipt given, and that the said
Edmund "should have nothing to do nor intermeddle therewith."
In this settlement of the East Stour farms, to the greater part of which
Henry Fielding, then six years old, would be joint heir with his sisters,
Colonel Fielding himself seems to have had to pay no less than £1750,
receiving therefor "a portion of the said lands." So by 1713 both
Edmund Fielding and his wife were settled, as no inconsiderable
landowners, among the pleasant meadows of Stour; and there for the
next five years Henry's early childhood was passed. Indeed, Mrs
Fielding must have been at Stour when her eldest son was but three
years old, for the baptism of a daughter, Sarah, appears in the Stour
registers in November 1710. This entry is followed by the baptism of
Anne in 1713, of Beatrice in 1714, of Edmund in 1716, and by the
death of Anne in the last-named year, Henry being then nine years old.
According to Arthur Murphy, Fielding's earliest and too often
inaccurate biographer, the boy received "the first rudiments of his

education at home, under the care of the Revd. Mr Oliver." Mr Oliver
was the curate of Motcombe, a neighbouring village; and we have the
authority of Murphy and of Hutchins, the historian of Dorset, for
finding 'a very humorous and striking portrait' of this pedagogue in the
Rev. Mr Trulliber, the pig-breeding parson of Joseph Andrews. If