Henry Fielding: A Memoir | Page 5

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 instituted in the name of Henry Fielding as complainant. Lady Gould opens her grandchildren's case with a comprehensive indictment of her son-in-law. After reciting that her daughter Sarah had married Edmund Fielding "without the consent of her Father or Mother and contrary to their good likeing," Lady Gould mentions her husband's bequest to their daughter, Sarah Fielding, of ��3000 in trust to be laid out in the purchase of lands for the benefit of her and her children "with direction that the said Edmund Fielding should have nothing to do nor intermeddle therewith." And how Sir Henry did in his lifetime purchase "Eastover" estate for his daughter, but died before the trust was completed; and that in 1713 his trustees, Edmund Fielding consenting, settled the