FIELDING, Henry, English novelist: b. Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, in the county of Somerset, 22 April 1707; d. Lisbon, Portugal, 8 Oct. 1754. His parents were Lieut. Edmund Fielding and his wife Sarah, daughter of Sir Henry Gould. It is believed that in the characters of Lieutenant Booth and Amelia, Fielding long afterward revived the figures of his young father and mother. By an old legend, put into magnificent form by Gibbon, the novelist was supposed to have descended from the Hapsburgs, but their connection with the ancient family of the Earls of Denbigh, to which the novelist certainly belonged, is now exploded. The Fieldings of Sharpham, though of moderate means, were well connected; the novelist's cousin was the famous Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. In 1710 his parents re moved, On the death of Sir Henry Gould, to East Stour in Dorsetshire, where Sarah Field ing (1710-68), Henry's sister and the gifted author of 'David Simple,' was born. To his childish adventures by the "pleasant banks of sweetly-winding Stour* Henry gives due record in (Tom Jones.' He was 11 years of age when the family moved again, after the death of Mrs. Fielding in 1718, and Henry was trans ferred to Eton. There is no record of his resi dence in the registers of the school, so that he was probably an oppidan. Murphy tells us that Fielding, when he left Eton, about 1726, °was said to be uncommonly versed in the Greek authors, and an early master of the Latin classics*; Fielding himself tells us that he knew Italian and French, could write Latin and could read Greek. The early idea that he was a poorly-educated man was based on preju dice and ill-will. Pitt and Fox were among his comrades at Eton. Before he left school, he fell in love with Sarah Andrew, a young lady of Lyme Regis, and even planned her ab duction, but the affair was discovered by her guardians, who prevented the romantic act, al though, as the archives of the town still record, going in fear of their lives "owing to the be havior of Henry Fielding and his attendant, or man.* This Miss Andrew was said to be the original of Sophia Western.
From Eton, Fielding proceeded to study law at Leyden for two years, which he did "with a remarkable application.* He settled in London early in 1728, doubtful whether to adopt, as Austin Dobson says, the profession of hackney writer or that of hackney-coachman; his father could no longer support him, and it was neces sary for him to subsist upon his wits. He de termined to turn playwright, but his earliest drama, the comedy of 'Love in Several Masques,' had no great success. It is difficult to trace the history of Fielding further during the next two years, but in 1730 he brought out another comedy, 'The Temple Beau,' and an extravaganza, The Author's Farce.' These were not unsuccessful, and they opened a long series of dramatic performances, by means of it would seem that Fielding obtained a precarious livelihood for the next seven years.
The very entertaining burlesque of (Tom Thumb' (1730), especially in its extended form as (The Tragedy of Tragedies' (1731), de serves a high position among these plays, most of which were of somewhat ephemeral import ance. In 1732 Fielding produced (The Modern Husband,' (The Covent Garden Tragedy,' 'The Debauchees,' and Mock-Doctor' ; the last mentioned comedy was highly successful, and so was (The Miser,' of 1733, but Fielding's share in the profits of these pieces cannot have been large. He lived, no doubt, on what he could borrow, earn or beg; sometimes in a London garret, sometimes in the country-house of a wealthy acquaintance. A satirist of the period describes him at this time as a "rough play-house bard,* and "clad in coarse frieze,* while his best biographer infers that his daily life must have been more than usually char acterized "by the vicissitudes of the eighteenth century prodigal.* 'The Intriguing Chamber maid' was Fielding's principal contribution to 1734, but the prolific dramatist was now begin ning to find that the town had become sated with his light and spicy confections. The date on which Fielding married Miss Charlotte Cradock, a respectable lady of independent means living at Salisbury, to whom he had for some years been attached, was long unknown, but it has recently (1906) been discovered that the marriage took place, by license, in the church of Saint Mary's, Charlcombe, close to Bath, on 28 Nov. 1734. It is at this time, and on Miss Cradock's money, that he has been be lieved to have begun "immediately to vie in splendor with the neighboring country squires,* and to have maintained a large retinue of serv ants, "all clad in costly yellow liveries.* This story has been criticized, and, in some of the particulars with which Murphy adorns it, it must be inexact in detail, yet it probably gives not an unfair impression of the lavish way in which, for about a year, Fielding lived in Dor setshire in a magnificence far beyond his means. His cousin, Lady Mary, said that Henry Fielding "would have wanted money if his hereditary lands had been as extensive as his imagination,* and in a few months he was back in London, again obliged to work for a precarious living. He returned to the drama, and in 1736 took the little French Theatre in the Haymarket, where he produced the success ful burlesque of (Pasquin,' by which he made more money than by any of his previous efforts. His career as a dramatic author, however, was checked by a Bill of 1737, in which Parliament restrained the license of the stage, and reduced the number of playhouses. The rest of the few and slight puppet-shows and farces which Fielding wrote need not be named here. His plays (they are 25 in number) although skilful and sprightly, have not the value of his novels, nor anything like their originality, and they are read to-day, if they are read at all, because they are Fielding's, and not because of their intrinsic merit.