The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling Henry Fielding - 42

power! Heaven put it as much into your will! I am only afraid your
honour will forget such a poor man as an innkeeper; but, if your
ladyship should not, I hope you will remember what reward I
refused--refused! that is, I would have refused, and to be sure it may
be called refusing, for I might have had it certainly; and to be sure
you might have been in some houses;--but, for my part, would not
methinks for the world have your ladyship wrong me so much as to
imagine I ever thought of betraying you, even before I heard the good
news."

"What news, pray?" says Sophia, something eagerly.

"Hath not your ladyship heard it, then?" cries the landlord; "nay,
like enough, for I heard it only a few minutes ago; and if I had never
heard it, may the devil fly away with me this instant if I would have
betrayed your honour! no, if I would, may I--" Here he subjoined
several dreadful imprecations, which Sophia at last interrupted, and
begged to know what he meant by the news.--He was going to answer,
when Mrs Honour came running into the room, all pale and breathless,
and cried out, "Madam, we are all undone, all ruined, they are come,
they are come!" These words almost froze up the blood of Sophia; but
Mrs Fitzpatrick asked Honour who were come?--"Who?" answered she,
"why, the French; several hundred thousands of them are landed, and we
shall be all murdered and ravished."

As a miser, who hath, in some well-built city, a cottage, value twenty
shillings, when at a distance he is alarmed with the news of a fire,
turns pale and trembles at his loss; but when he finds the beautiful
palaces only are burnt, and his own cottage remains safe, he comes
instantly to himself, and smiles at his good fortunes: or as (for we
dislike something in the former simile) the tender mother, when
terrified with the apprehension that her darling boy is drowned, is
struck senseless and almost dead with consternation; but when she is
told that little master is safe, and the Victory only, with twelve
hundred brave men, gone to the bottom, life and sense again return,
maternal fondness enjoys the sudden relief from all its fears, and the
general benevolence which at another time would have deeply felt the
dreadful catastrophe, lies fast asleep in her mind;--so Sophia, than
whom none was more capable of tenderly feeling the general calamity of
her country, found such immediate satisfaction from the relief of
those terrors she had of being overtaken by her father, that the
arrival of the French scarce made any impression on her. She gently
chid her maid for the fright into which she had thrown her, and said
"she was glad it was no worse; for that she had feared somebody else
was come."

"Ay, ay," quoth the landlord, smiling, "her ladyship knows better
things; she knows the French are our very best friends, and come over
hither only for our good. They are the people who are to make Old
England flourish again. I warrant her honour thought the duke was
coming; and that was enough to put her into a fright. I was going to
tell your ladyship the news.--His honour's majesty, Heaven bless him,
hath given the duke the slip, and is marching as fast as he can to
London, and ten thousand French are landed to join him on the road."

Sophia was not greatly pleased with this news, nor with the gentleman
who related it; but, as she still imagined he knew her (for she could
not possibly have any suspicion of the real truth), she durst not show
any dislike. And now the landlord, having removed the cloth from the
table, withdrew; but at his departure frequently repeated his hopes of
being remembered hereafter.

The mind of Sophia was not at all easy under the supposition of being
known at this house; for she still applied to herself many things
which the landlord had addressed to Jenny Cameron; she therefore
ordered her maid to pump out of him by what means he had become
acquainted with her person, and who had offered him the reward for
betraying her; she likewise ordered the horses to be in readiness by
four in the morning, at which hour Mrs Fitzpatrick promised to bear
her company; and then, composing herself as well as she could, she
desired that lady to continue her story.



Chapter vii.

In which Mrs Fitzpatrick concludes her history.


While Mrs Honour, in pursuance of the commands of her mistress,
ordered a bowl of punch, and invited my landlord and landlady to
partake of it, Mrs Fitzpatrick thus went on with her relation.

"Most of the officers who were quartered at a town in our
neighbourhood were of my husband's acquaintance. Among these there was
a lieutenant, a very pretty sort of man, and who was married to a
woman, so agreeable both in her temper and conversation, that from our
first knowing each other, which was soon after my lying-in, we were
almost inseparable companions; for I had the good fortune to make
myself equally agreeable to her.

"The lieutenant, who was neither a sot nor a sportsman, was frequently
of our parties; indeed he was very little with my husband, and no more
than good breeding constrained him to be, as he lived almost
constantly at our house. My husband often expressed much
dissatisfaction at the lieutenant's preferring my company to his; he
was very angry with me on that account, and gave me many a hearty
curse for drawing away his companions; saying, `I ought to be d--n'd
for having spoiled one of the prettiest fellows in the world, by
making a milksop of him.'

"You will be mistaken, my dear Sophia, if you imagine that the anger
of my husband arose from my depriving him of a companion; for the
lieutenant was not a person with whose society a fool could be
pleased; and, if I should admit the possibility of this, so little
right had my husband to place the loss of his companion to me, that I
am convinced it was my conversation alone which induced him ever to
come to the house. No, child, it was envy, the worst and most
rancorous kind of envy, the envy of superiority of understanding. The
wretch could not bear to see my conversation preferred to his, by a
man of whom he could not entertain the least jealousy. O my dear
Sophy, you are a woman of sense; if you marry a man, as is most
probable you will, of less capacity than yourself, make frequent
trials of his temper before marriage, and see whether he can bear to
submit to such a superiority.--Promise me, Sophy, you will take this
advice; for you will hereafter find its importance." "It is very
likely I shall never marry at all," answered Sophia; "I think, at
least, I shall never marry a man in whose understanding I see any
defects before marriage; and I promise you I would rather give up my
own than see any such afterwards." "Give up your understanding!"
replied Mrs Fitzpatrick; "oh, fie, child! I will not believe so meanly
of you. Everything else I might myself be brought to give up; but
never this. Nature would not have allotted this superiority to the
wife in so many instances, if she had intended we should all of us
have surrendered it to the husband. This, indeed, men of sense never
expect of us; of which the lieutenant I have just mentioned was one
notable example; for though he had a very good understanding, he
always acknowledged (as was really true) that his wife had a better.
And this, perhaps, was one reason of the hatred my tyrant bore her.

"Before he would be so governed by a wife, he said, especially such an
ugly b-- (for, indeed, she was not a regular beauty, but very
agreeable and extremely genteel), he would see all the women upon
earth at the devil, which was a very usual phrase with him. He said,
he wondered what I could see in her to be so charmed with her company:
since this woman, says he, hath come among us, there is an end of your
beloved reading, which you pretended to like so much, that you could
not afford time to return the visits of the ladies in this country;
and I must confess I had been guilty of a little rudeness this way;
for the ladies there are at least no better than the mere country
ladies here; and I think I need make no other excuse to you for
declining any intimacy with them.

"This correspondence, however, continued a whole year, even all the
while the lieutenant was quartered in that town; for which I was
contented to pay the tax of being constantly abused in the manner
above mentioned by my husband; I mean when he was at home; for he was
frequently absent a month at a time at Dublin, and once made a journey
of two months to London: in all which journeys I thought it a very
singular happiness that he never once desired my company; nay, by his
frequent censures on men who could not travel, as he phrased it,
without a wife tied up to their tail, he sufficiently intimated that,
had I been never so desirous of accompanying him, my wishes would have
been in vain; but, Heaven knows, such wishes were very far from my
thoughts.

"At length my friend was removed from me, and I was again left to my
solitude, to the tormenting conversation with my own reflections, and
to apply to books for my only comfort. I now read almost all day long.
How many books do you think I read in three months?" "I can't guess,
indeed, cousin," answered Sophia. "Perhaps half a score." "Half a
score! half a thousand, child!" answered the other. "I read a good
deal in Daniel's English History of France; a great deal in Plutarch's
Lives, the Atalantis, Pope's Homer, Dryden's Plays, Chillingworth, the
Countess D'Aulnois, and Locke's Human Understanding.

"During this interval I wrote three very supplicating, and, I thought,
moving letters to my aunt; but, as I received no answer to any of
them, my disdain would not suffer me to continue my application." Here
she stopt, and, looking earnestly at Sophia, said, "Methinks, my dear,
I read something in your eyes which reproaches me of a neglect in
another place, where I should have met with a kinder return." "Indeed,
dear Harriet," answered Sophia, "your story is an apology for any
neglect; but, indeed, I feel that I have been guilty of a remissness,
without so good an excuse.--Yet pray proceed; for I long, though I
tremble, to hear the end."

Thus, then, Mrs Fitzpatrick resumed her narrative:--"My husband now
took a second journey to England, where he continued upwards of three
months; during the greater part of this time I led a life which
nothing but having led a worse could make me think tolerable; for
perfect solitude can never be reconciled to a social mind, like mine,
but when it relieves you from the company of those you hate. What
added to my wretchedness was the loss of my little infant: not that I
pretend to have had for it that extravagant tenderness of which I
believe I might have been capable under other circumstances; but I
resolved, in every instance, to discharge the duty of the tenderest
mother; and this care prevented me from feeling the weight of that
heaviest of all things, when it can be at all said to lie heavy on our
hands.

"I had spent full ten weeks almost entirely by myself, having seen
nobody all that time, except my servants and a very few visitors, when
a young lady, a relation to my husband, came from a distant part of
Ireland to visit me. She had staid once before a week at my house, and
then I gave her a pressing invitation to return; for she was a very
agreeable woman, and had improved good natural parts by a proper
education. Indeed, she was to me a welcome guest.

"A few days after her arrival, perceiving me in very low spirits,
without enquiring the cause, which, indeed, she very well knew, the
young lady fell to compassionating my case. She said, `Though
politeness had prevented me from complaining to my husband's relations
of his behaviour, yet they all were very sensible of it, and felt
great concern upon that account; but none more than herself.' And
after some more general discourse on this head, which I own I could
not forbear countenancing, at last, after much previous precaution and
enjoined concealment, she communicated to me, as a profound
secret--that my husband kept a mistress.

"You will certainly imagine I heard this news with the utmost
insensibility--Upon my word, if you do, your imagination will mislead
you. Contempt had not so kept down my anger to my husband, but that
hatred rose again on this occasion. What can be the reason of this?
Are we so abominably selfish, that we can be concerned at others
having possession even of what we despise? Or are we not rather
abominably vain, and is not this the greatest injury done to our
vanity? What think you, Sophia?"

"I don't know, indeed," answered Sophia; "I have never troubled myself
with any of these deep contemplations; but I think the lady did very
ill in communicating to you such a secret."

"And yet, my dear, this conduct is natural," replied Mrs Fitzpatrick;
"and, when you have seen and read as much as myself, you will
acknowledge it to be so."

"I am sorry to hear it is natural," returned Sophia; "for I want
neither reading nor experience to convince me that it is very
dishonourable and very ill-natured: nay, it is surely as ill-bred to
tell a husband or wife of the faults of each other as to tell them of
their own."

"Well," continued Mrs Fitzpatrick, "my husband at last returned; and,
if I am thoroughly acquainted with my own thoughts, I hated him now
more than ever; but I despised him rather less: for certainly nothing
so much weakens our contempt, as an injury done to our pride or our
vanity.

"He now assumed a carriage to me so very different from what he had
lately worn, and so nearly resembling his behaviour the first week of
our marriage, that, had I now had any spark of love remaining, he
might, possibly, have rekindled my fondness for him. But, though
hatred may succeed to contempt, and may perhaps get the better of it,
love, I believe, cannot. The truth is, the passion of love is too
restless to remain contented without the gratification which it
receives from its object; and one can no more be inclined to love
without loving than we can have eyes without seeing. When a husband,
therefore, ceases to be the object of this passion, it is most
probable some other man--I say, my dear, if your husband grows
indifferent to you--if you once come to despise him--I say--that
is--if you have the passion of love in you--Lud! I have bewildered
myself so--but one is apt, in these abstracted considerations, to lose
the concatenation of ideas, as Mr Locke says:--in short, the truth
is--in short, I scarce know what it is; but, as I was saying, my
husband returned, and his behaviour, at first, greatly surprized me;
but he soon acquainted me with the motive, and taught me to account
for it. In a word, then, he had spent and lost all the ready money of
my fortune; and, as he could mortgage his own estate no deeper, he was
now desirous to supply himself with cash for his extravagance, by
selling a little estate of mine, which he could not do without my
assistance; and to obtain this favour was the whole and sole motive of
all the fondness which he now put on.

"With this I peremptorily refused to comply. I told him, and I told
him truly, that, had I been possessed of the Indies at our first
marriage, he might have commanded it all; for it had been a constant
maxim with me, that where a woman disposes of her heart, she should
always deposit her fortune; but, as he had been so kind, long ago, to
restore the former into my possession, I was resolved likewise to
retain what little remained of the latter.

"I will not describe to you the passion into which these words, and
the resolute air in which they were spoken, threw him: nor will I
trouble you with the whole scene which succeeded between us. Out came,
you may be well assured, the story of the mistress; and out it did
come, with all the embellishments which anger and disdain could bestow
upon it.

"Mr Fitzpatrick seemed a little thunderstruck with this, and more
confused than I had seen him, though his ideas are always confused
enough, heaven knows. He did not, however, endeavour to exculpate
himself; but took a method which almost equally confounded me. What
was this but recrimination? He affected to be jealous:--he may, for
aught I know, be inclined enough to jealousy in his natural temper;
nay, he must have had it from nature, or the devil must have put it
into his head; for I defy all the world to cast a just aspersion on my
character: nay, the most scandalous tongues have never dared censure
my reputation. My fame, I thank heaven, hath been always as spotless
as my life; and let falsehood itself accuse that if it dare. No, my
dear Graveairs, however provoked, however ill-treated, however injured
in my love, I have firmly resolved never to give the least room for
censure on this account.--And yet, my dear, there are some people so
malicious, some tongues so venomous, that no innocence can escape
them. The most undesigned word, the most accidental look, the least
familiarity, the most innocent freedom, will be misconstrued, and
magnified into I know not what, by some people. But I despise, my dear
Graveairs, I despise all such slander. No such malice, I assure you,
ever gave me an uneasy moment. No, no, I promise you I am above all
that.--But where was I? O let me see, I told you my husband was
jealous--And of whom, I pray?--Why, of whom but the lieutenant I
mentioned to you before! He was obliged to resort above a year and
more back to find any object for this unaccountable passion, if,
indeed, he really felt any such, and was not an arrant counterfeit in
order to abuse me.

"But I have tired you already with too many particulars. I will now
bring my story to a very speedy conclusion. In short, then, after many
scenes very unworthy to be repeated, in which my cousin engaged so
heartily on my side, that Mr Fitzpatrick at last turned her out of
doors; when he found I was neither to be soothed nor bullied into
compliance, he took a very violent method indeed. Perhaps you will
conclude he beat me; but this, though he hath approached very near to
it, he never actually did. He confined me to my room, without
suffering me to have either pen, ink, paper, or book: and a servant
every day made my bed, and brought me my food.

"When I had remained a week under this imprisonment, he made me a
visit, and, with the voice of a schoolmaster, or, what is often much
the same, of a tyrant, asked me, `If I would yet comply?' I answered,
very stoutly, `That I would die first.' `Then so you shall, and be
d--nd!' cries he; `for you shall never go alive out of this room.'

"Here I remained a fortnight longer; and, to say the truth, my
constancy was almost subdued, and I began to think of submission;
when, one day, in the absence of my husband, who was gone abroad for
some short time, by the greatest good fortune in the world, an
accident happened.--I--at a time when I began to give way to the
utmost despair----everything would be excusable at such a time--at
that very time I received----But it would take up an hour to tell you
all particulars.--In one word, then (for I will not tire you with
circumstances), gold, the common key to all padlocks, opened my door,
and set me at liberty.

"I now made haste to Dublin, where I immediately procured a passage to
England; and was proceeding to Bath, in order to throw myself into the
protection of my aunt, or of your father, or of any relation who would
afford it me. My husband overtook me last night at the inn where I
lay, and which you left a few minutes before me; but I had the good
luck to escape him, and to follow you.

"And thus, my dear, ends my history: a tragical one, I am sure, it is
to myself; but, perhaps, I ought rather to apologize to you for its
dullness."

Sophia heaved a deep sigh, and answered, "Indeed, Harriet, I pity you
from my soul!----But what could you expect? Why, why, would you marry
an Irishman?"

"Upon my word," replied her cousin, "your censure is unjust. There
are, among the Irish, men of as much worth and honour as any among the
English: nay, to speak the truth, generosity of spirit is rather more
common among them. I have known some examples there, too, of good
husbands; and I believe these are not very plenty in England. Ask me,
rather, what I could expect when I married a fool; and I will tell you
a solemn truth; I did not know him to be so."--"Can no man," said
Sophia, in a very low and altered voice, "do you think, make a bad
husband, who is not a fool?" "That," answered the other, "is too
general a negative; but none, I believe, is so likely as a fool to
prove so. Among my acquaintance, the silliest fellows are the worst
husbands; and I will venture to assert, as a fact, that a man of sense
rarely behaves very ill to a wife who deserves very well."



Chapter viii.

A dreadful alarm in the inn, with the arrival of an unexpected friend
of Mrs Fitzpatrick.


Sophia now, at the desire of her cousin, related--not what follows,
but what hath gone before in this history: for which reason the reader
will, I suppose, excuse me for not repeating it over again.

One remark, however, I cannot forbear making on her narrative, namely,
that she made no more mention of Jones, from the beginning to the end,
than if there had been no such person alive. This I will neither
endeavour to account for nor to excuse. Indeed, if this may be called
a kind of dishonesty, it seems the more inexcusable, from the apparent
openness and explicit sincerity of the other lady.--But so it was.

Just as Sophia arrived at the conclusion of her story, there arrived
in the room where the two ladies were sitting a noise, not unlike, in
loudness, to that of a pack of hounds just let out from their kennel;
nor, in shrillness, to cats, when caterwauling; or to screech owls;
or, indeed, more like (for what animal can resemble a human voice?) to
those sounds which, in the pleasant mansions of that gate which seems
to derive its name from a duplicity of tongues, issue from the mouths,
and sometimes from the nostrils, of those fair river nymphs, ycleped
of old the Naïades; in the vulgar tongue translated oyster-wenches;
for when, instead of the antient libations of milk and honey and oil,
the rich distillation from the juniper-berry, or, perhaps, from malt,
hath, by the early devotion of their votaries, been poured forth in
great abundance, should any daring tongue with unhallowed license
prophane, _i.e._, depreciate, the delicate fat Milton oyster, the
plaice sound and firm, the flounder as much alive as when in the
water, the shrimp as big as a prawn, the fine cod alive but a few
hours ago, or any other of the various treasures which those
water-deities who fish the sea and rivers have committed to the care
of the nymphs, the angry Naïades lift up their immortal voices, and
the prophane wretch is struck deaf for his impiety.

Such was the noise which now burst from one of the rooms below; and
soon the thunder, which long had rattled at a distance, began to
approach nearer and nearer, till, having ascended by degrees upstairs,
it at last entered the apartment where the ladies were. In short, to
drop all metaphor and figure, Mrs Honour, having scolded violently
below-stairs, and continued the same all the way up, came in to her
mistress in a most outrageous passion, crying out, "What doth your
ladyship think? Would you imagine that this impudent villain, the
master of this house, hath had the impudence to tell me, nay, to stand
it out to my face, that your ladyship is that nasty, stinking wh--re
(Jenny Cameron they call her), that runs about the country with the
Pretender? Nay, the lying, saucy villain had the assurance to tell me
that your ladyship had owned yourself to be so; but I have clawed the
rascal; I have left the marks of my nails in his impudent face. My
lady! says I, you saucy scoundrel; my lady is meat for no pretenders.
She is a young lady of as good fashion, and family, and fortune, as
any in Somersetshire. Did you never hear of the great Squire Western,
sirrah? She is his only daughter; she is----, and heiress to all his
great estate. My lady to be called a nasty Scotch wh--re by such a
varlet!--To be sure I wish I had knocked his brains out with the
punch-bowl."

The principal uneasiness with which Sophia was affected on this
occasion Honour had herself caused, by having in her passion
discovered who she was. However, as this mistake of the landlord
sufficiently accounted for those passages which Sophia had before
mistaken, she acquired some ease on that account; nor could she, upon
the whole, forbear smiling. This enraged Honour, and she cried,
"Indeed, madam, I did not think your ladyship would have made a
laughing matter of it. To be called whore by such an impudent low
rascal. Your ladyship may be angry with me, for aught I know, for
taking your part, since proffered service, they say, stinks; but to be
sure I could never bear to hear a lady of mine called whore.--Nor will
I bear it. I am sure your ladyship is as virtuous a lady as ever sat
foot on English ground, and I will claw any villain's eyes out who
dares for to offer to presume for to say the least word to the
contrary. Nobody ever could say the least ill of the character of any
lady that ever I waited upon."

_Hinc illae lachrymae;_ in plain truth, Honour had as much love for
her mistress as most servants have, that is to say--But besides this,
her pride obliged her to support the character of the lady she waited
on; for she thought her own was in a very close manner connected with
it. In proportion as the character of her mistress was raised, hers
likewise, as she conceived, was raised with it; and, on the contrary,
she thought the one could not be lowered without the other.

On this subject, reader, I must stop a moment, to tell thee a story.
"The famous Nell Gwynn, stepping one day, from a house where she had
made a short visit, into her coach, saw a great mob assembled, and her
footman all bloody and dirty; the fellow, being asked by his mistress
the reason of his being in that condition, answered, `I have been
fighting, madam, with an impudent rascal who called your ladyship a
wh--re.' `You blockhead,' replied Mrs Gwynn, `at this rate you must
fight every day of your life; why, you fool, all the world knows it.'
`Do they?' cries the fellow, in a muttering voice, after he had shut
the coach-door, `they shan't call me a whore's footman for all that.'"

Thus the passion of Mrs Honour appears natural enough, even if it were
to be no otherwise accounted for; but, in reality, there was another
cause of her anger; for which we must beg leave to remind our reader
of a circumstance mentioned in the above simile. There are indeed
certain liquors, which, being applied to our passions, or to fire,
produce effects the very reverse of those produced by water, as they
serve to kindle and inflame, rather than to extinguish. Among these,
the generous liquor called punch is one. It was not, therefore,
without reason, that the learned Dr Cheney used to call drinking punch
pouring liquid fire down your throat.

Now, Mrs Honour had unluckily poured so much of this liquid fire down
her throat, that the smoke of it began to ascend into her pericranium
and blinded the eyes of Reason, which is there supposed to keep her
residence, while the fire itself from the stomach easily reached the
heart, and there inflamed the noble passion of pride. So that, upon
the whole, we shall cease to wonder at the violent rage of the
waiting-woman; though at first sight we must confess the cause seems
inadequate to the effect.

Sophia and her cousin both did all in their power to extinguish these
flames which had roared so loudly all over the house. They at length
prevailed; or, to carry the metaphor one step farther, the fire,
having consumed all the fuel which the language affords, to wit, every
reproachful term in it, at last went out of its own accord.

But, though tranquillity was restored above-stairs, it was not so
below; where my landlady, highly resenting the injury done to the