"Can there on Earth, my _Celia_, be, A Price I would not pay for thee? Yes, one dear precious Tear of thine Should not be shed to make thee mine."
To read Swift's _Journal to Stella_ is almost a sacrilege; the little notes that Dick Steele would write to his 'dearest Prue' at all hours of day and night, from tavern and printing office, are scarce less private; no such seals have been broken, no such records preserved, of the love story of Harry Fielding. But to neither Swift nor Steele was it given to raise so perfect and imperishable a memorial of the women loved by them, as that reared by the passionate affection and grief of Fielding for Charlotte Cradock. To this day the beautiful young figure of Sophia Western, all charm and goodness, is alive in his immortal pages. And if, as her friend Lady Bute asserts, Amelia also is Mrs Fielding's portrait, then we know her no less intimately as wife and mother. We watch her brave spirit never failing under the most cruel distresses and conflicts; we play with her children in their little nursery; we hear her pleasant wit with the good parson; we feel her fresh beauty, undimmed in the poor remnants of a wardrobe that has gone, with her trinkets, to the pawnbroker; we see a hundred examples of her courage and tenderness and generosity. There is nothing in Fielding's life that is more to his honour than the brief words in which so competent an observer as Lady Bute summed up his marriage with Charlotte Cradock, "he loved her passionately and she returned his affection."
It was in the little country church of St Mary Charlcombe, a remote village some two miles from Bath, that "Henry Fielding, of ye Parish of St James in Bath, Esq., and Charlotte Cradock of ye same Parish, spinster" were married, on the 28th of November 1734. [2] Fifty years later the village was described as containing only nine houses, the church, well fitted for the flock, being but eighteen feet wide. The old Somerset historian, Collinson, tells us how the hamlet stood on rising ground, in a deep retired valley, surrounded by noble hills, and with a little stream winding through the vale.
In the January following Fielding and his wife were presumably back in town; for in this month he produced, at Drury Lane, the brisk little farce called _An Old Man taught Wisdom_, a title afterwards changed to the _Virgin Unmasked_. It is probable that this farce was especially written to suit Kitty Clive in her excelling character of hoyden; and to it, as we have seen, together with two of its predecessors, is assigned the credit of having first given that superb comic actress an opportunity of revealing her powers. Mrs Clive here played the part of Miss Lucy, a forward young lady who after skittishly interviewing a number of suitors proposed by her father, finally runs away with Thomas the footman. The little piece is said to have achieved success; but scarce had it been staged when "the prolific Mr Fielding," as a newspaper of the day styles him, brought out a five-act comedy, named the _Universal Gallant: or The different Husbands_, which wholly failed to please the audience, and indeed ran but for three nights.