Harry of England
WHAT is a proper Englishman like ? Well, first of all he is to be found only in England, for abroad he has a sour face, detesting as he does all foreigners, and this sour face is not a part of his essential nature. He detests foreigners because he is honest and jolly, and from abroad come all flim-flam and foppery, such as Italian opera and the Roman Catholic Church. His diet like his heart is honest and straightforward, being roast beef, which he follows with a pipe of good tobacco. When he is young he is rip-roaring good fellow, a merry andrew, and as he grows old he acquires the tolerance, sympathy and wisdom of all good men and true. But he is no saint. He sows his wild oats, gets drunk, keeps a mistress like the rest of mankind. but, honest, incorruptible and
for the right, he comes through undamaged. The purest ore in this strain is to be found in the first half of the eighteenth century according to Mr. Willcocks, and the most shining specimen is Henry Fielding.
If all these qualities make a true-born Englishman, then Fielding is one. But I am suspicious of Mr. Willcocks's intentions in present- ing him as such. In a recent Marginal Comment, Mr. Harold Nicolson discussed the purposes of biography, and mentioned as two of the most usual the desire to commemorate and the desire to instruct, both of which to a certain extent obscure the truth about the subject of the biography. Mr. Willcocks combines both these purposes. His sympathy for Fielding's character is great, which is as it should be, but it springs from such qualities as I have described above, and he sets out to prove that Fielding's character conformed to them. This puts the emphasis in the wrong place, on the virtues of the English character as displayed, by Fielding rather than on Fielding as an individual.
Mr. Willcocks's purpose is in fact patriotic—all very well in its place, but irritating to the reader who opens the book suspecting no such thing—and it adds nothing to our knowledge of Fielding, who does not always live up to the standard he has been set by his biographer. He did not like Rabelais as good English- men should. He was tolerant, but expressed no horror at the sight of Jacobite heads crowning Temple Bar after the '45, and when he drevi, designs for county workhouses, he put in—" Alas," says Mr. Willcocks—whipping posts. Why alas ? If Jielding thought in a particular way, it is interesting to know it ; it is not a bit important if he deviates from a particular ideal. But Fielding is the ideal, so there is very little he can do wrong ; and his works, we find, are above criticism. Virtues are discovered in the plays ; Amelia, surely one of the most insipid women, is set up for us to admire as a perfect heroine ; it is the plot in Tom Jones which is singled out for praise. To complete the effect Mr. Willcocks writes in a careless and jovial style, supposedly suitable-to his hero. There are frequent references to "young Harry Fielding," "hearty Fielding," his lusty virile words and the virtues of claret and port. As a biography this book is a failure, because Mr. Willcocks is busy, not showing us Fielding, but showing us that Fielding was something in particular—a true-born Englishman.
But those who are not put off by the rollicking tone, and the suspicion that they are really being shown our island genius in Henry Fielding's clothing, will find this book readable and enter- taining in spite of its many faults. A quantity of miscellaneous information gives it a merit quite independent of the subject, con- juring up a vivid picture of the early eighteenth century, when—we learn—flocks of asses were milked in the streets of London, and a cavalry charge was accompanied by a cloud of flying wigs. Trifles these, but valuable all the same, because, although human nature may not change, the pictures which fill people's minds change with every generation. It is such trifles which remind us, that the people we are reading about are not contemporaries in fancy dress.
PHILIP TROWER.
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