'Her lips were red and one was thin, Compar'd to that was next her chin. Some bee had stung it newly,'"
with a dimple in the right cheek, and a complexion rather more of the lily than the rose unless increased by exercise or modesty when no vermilion could equal it--such was the appearance of Sophia, who, most of all "resembled one whose image never can depart from my breast."
Nor was the beautiful frame, Fielding hastens to add, disgraced by an unworthy inhabitant. He lingers on the sweetness of temper which "diffused a glory over her countenance which no regularity of features can give"; on her perfect breeding, "though wanting perhaps a little of that ease in her behaviour which is to be acquired only by habit, and living within what is called the polite circle"; on the "noble, elevated qualities" which outshone even her beauty.
The only facts recorded concerning Miss Cradock are that her home was in Salisbury, or New Sarum as the city was then called, and that she possessed a small fortune. It is said, but on what authority is not stated, that she was one of three beautiful sisters, the belles of the country town; and it is in accordance with this tradition that Fielding should celebrate in some verses "writ when the Author was very young," the beauty and intellectual charm of the Miss Cradocks. When printing these verses many years afterwards, in his _Miscellanies_ he describes the poem as originally partly filled in with the 'Names of several young Ladies,' which part he now omits, "the rather, as some Freedoms, tho' gentle ones, were taken with little Foibles in the amiable Sex, whom to affront in Print, is, we conceive, mean in any Man, and scandalous in a Gentleman." Certainly the Miss Cradocks suffered no affront in the lines retained, wherein the young poet affirms that of all the famed nymphs of Sarum, that favoured city,
"Whose Nymphs excel all Beauty's Flowers, As thy high Steeple doth all Towers"
the 'C----cks' were the best and fairest. Nay, has not great Jove himself apportioned a 'celestial Dower' to these most favoured of maidens,
"To form whose lovely Minds and Faces I stript half Heaven of its Graces."
From this charming sisterhood Harry Fielding won his bride, but not until four years of waiting had been accomplished. So much may be assumed from the early date of the verses entitled "Advice to the Nymphs of _New S---m_. Written in the Year 1730." Here the newly returned student from Leyden, the successful dramatist from Drury Lane, bids the Salisbury beauties cease their vain endeavours to contend with the matchless charms of his Celia. And here, in a pretty compliment introduced to the great Mr Pope, then at the height of his fame, we are reminded that Celia's lover is already a man of letters, for all his mere three and twenty years. When Celia meets her equal, then, he declares, farthing candles shall eclipse the moon, and "sweet _Pope_ be dull."