Henry Fielding: A Memoir | Page 5

this
be so, Harry Fielding's first tutor at Stour was of a figure eminently
calculated to foster the comic genius of his pupil. "He" (Trulliber),
wrote that pupil, some thirty years later, "was indeed one of the largest
Men you should see, and could have acted the part of Sir John Falstaff
without stuffing. Add to this, that the Rotundity of his Belly was
considerably increased by the shortness of his Stature, his shadow
ascending very near as far in height when he lay on his Back, as when
he stood on his Legs. His Voice was loud and hoarse, and his Accents
extremely broad; to complete the whole he had a Stateliness in his Gait
when he walked, not unlike that of a Goose, only he stalked slower." It
appears that the widow of the Motcombe curate denied the alleged
portrait; but the house where Mr Oliver lived, "seemed to accord with
Fielding's description ... and an old woman who remembered him
observed that 'he dearly loved a bit of good victuals, and a drop of
drink.'" Bearing in mind the great novelist's own earnest declaration
that he painted "not men but manners," we may fairly assume that his
Dorsetshire tutor belonged to that class of coarse farmer-parson so
justly satirised in the person of Trulliber. According to another sketch
of Fielding's life, his early education was also directed by the rector of
Stour Provost, "his Parson Adams." [4]
While Harry Fielding was thus learning his first rudiments, his father,
the colonel, seems to have been engaged in less useful pursuits in
London. The nature of these pursuits appears from a Bill of Complaint,
which by a happy chance has been preserved, between "Edmund
Fielding of East Stour, Dorsetshire," and one Robert Midford,
pretending to be a captain of the army. In this Bill [5] the said Edmund
declares that in 1716, being then resident in London, he often
frequented Princes Coffee-house in the Parish of St James. At Princes
he found his company sought by the reputed Captain Robert Midford,
who "prevailed upon him to play a game called 'Faro' for a small matter
of diversion, but by degrees drew him on to play for larger sums, and

by secret and fraudulent means obtained very large sums, in particular
notes and bonds for £500." Further, the colonel entered into a bond of
£200 to one Mrs Barbara Midford, "sister or pretended sister of the said
Robert"; and so finally was threatened with outlawry by 'Captain'
Midford for, presumably, payment of these debts. How Colonel
Edmund finally escaped from the clutches of these rogues does not
appear; but it is clear enough that his Dorsetshire meadows were a safer
place than Princes Coffee-house for a gentleman who could lose £500
at faro to a masquerading army captain. Also Sir Henry Gould's
wisdom becomes apparent, in bequeathing his daughter an inheritance
with which her husband was to have "nothing to doe."
In 1718, two years after Colonel Fielding's experience at Princes, Mrs
Fielding died, leaving six young children to her husband's care, two
sons and four daughters, Henry, the eldest being but eleven years old.
Her death is recorded in the East Stour registers as follows:--"Sarah,
Wife of the Hon. Edmund Fielding Esqre. and daughter of Sir Henry
Gould Kt. April 18 1718."
About this time (the dates vary between 1716 and 1719) Edmund
Fielding was appointed Colonel of the Invalids, an appointment which
he appears to have held until his death. And within two years of the
death of his first wife, Colonel Fielding must have married again, for in
1720 we find him and his then wife, Anne, selling some 153 acres with
messuages, barns and gardens, in East and West Stour, to one
Awnsham Churchill, Esquire. What relation, if any, this land had to the
property of the colonel's late wife and her children does not appear.
Some time in 1719, the year after his mother's death, or early in 1720,
Henry was sent to Eton, as appears from his father's statement, made in
February 1721, that his eldest son "who is now upwards of thirteen
yeares old is and for more than a yeare last past hath been maintained ...
at Eaton schoole, the yearely expence whereof costs ... upwards of
£60." And the boy must have been well away from the atmosphere of
his home, in these first years after his mother's death, if the allegations
of his grandmother, old Lady Gould, may be believed.
These hitherto unknown records of Henry Fielding's boyhood are to be

found in the proceedings of a Chancery suit begun by Lady Gould, on
behalf of her six grandchildren, Henry, Edmund, [6] Katherine, Ursula,
Sarah and Beatrice, three years after the death of their mother--namely,
on the 10th of February 1721, and