Something Old

Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published four or more years ago.    

“THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, A FOUNDLING” by Henry Fielding (First published in 1749)

            A number of years ago, when this blog was young, I made it my business to read all the readable works of Henry Fielding (1707-1754), meaning everything he wrote apart from his journalism (which was prolific). Thus you will find on this blog accounts of two of his three novels Joseph Andrews (still my favourite Fielding novel) and Amelia ; his satire Jonathan Wild ; his travel book The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon ; his fantasy story A Journey From This World to the Next  and his burlesque play The Tragedy of Tragedies (also known as The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great). But the one work by Fielding that I did not cover was his most famous, Tom Jones or if you wish to be pedantic The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling. Why did I not cover it, even if I wrote screeds of notes about it? Because I found the sheer length of it (800-odd pages in the Penguin edition that sits on my shelf) often working against the humour and wit, not helped by the admonitory (if often ironic) personal editorials with which Fielding opens each of the many “books” that make up this quite long novel.

            Easing myself back into Tom Jones after all these years, I’ve decided to take another look at it, so first one of my notoriously simplified synopses – and I’m afraid it’s full of “spoilers” if you haven’t read the novel.

            In the west of England an infant child is discovered in the bed of the benevolent Squire Allworthy. He is believed to be the illegitimate son of the village woman Jenny Jones and the schoolteacher Partridge, who are both run out of town for their immorality. The infant is christened Tom and is brought up by Squire Allworthy in his own household. The squire’s spinster sister Bridget Allworthy marries late in life, but soon dies, leaving her son Blifil, also brought up in Squire Allworthy’s household. Tom and Blifil are both tutored by the sadistic parson Thwackum and the smug rationalist philosopher Square. As a boy and young man, Tom gets into many scrapes, including a brief affair with Molly Seagrim, the daughter of the gamekeeper Black George Seagrim. Tom cools on Molly when he discovers that she sleeps with many men, including the hypocritical Square. But he comes to love, and be loved by, Sophia Western, the daughter of the neighbouring Squire Western. However the self-righteous sneak Blifil hates Tom and contrives to have him banished and sent away by Squire Allworthy.

            The central section of the novel then takes place on the road to London, being a very mixed set of picaresque events. After almost being persuaded to go off and fight against the Jacobites (the centre of the novel takes place during the Jacobite rising of 1745), and having at one point been badly beaten and left for dead, Tom falls in with the banished Partridge, who has become a barber-surgeon and who is virtually Tom’s Sancho Panza (very like the Reverend Abraham Adams to Joseph Andrews in Joseph Andrews). Tom also has a brief affair with Mrs Waters, whom he has saved from being raped by a soldier. And he encounters the very choleric Irish gentleman Fitzpatrick, who is chasing his runaway wife and who happens to be a cousin of Sophia Western.

            Once in London, Tom searches for Sophia, but is snared by the fashionable nymphomaniac Lady Bellaston, who makes him her kept man. Tom discovers Sophia’s whereabouts, and extricates himself from Lady Bellaston. But then many misfortunes fall upon him – he has a fight with the choleric Fitzpatrick and is hauled off to prison after having apparently killed the man. And he discover that Mrs Waters is in fact Jenny Jones. He may have slept with his own mother!

            The happy ending comes (after many, many events that aren’t in this synopsis) thanks to the agency of many people who have reason to be grateful to Tom. Blifil’s treachery and hypocrisy are revealed when Squire Allworthy discovers that Tom is really the son of Bridget Allworthy, and that Blifil (who of course stood to be heir to the squire’s estate) knew the truth all along but suppressed the evidence. The beaten Fitzpatrick recovers from his wounds and forgives Tom for the thrashing Tom gave him, so Tom is guilty of neither incest nor murder. Squire Western of course drops all objections to Tom marrying Sophia now that Tom is heir to the Allworthy estate. And Sophia, once she is persuaded that Tom was not to blame for his affair with Lady Bellaston, forgives Tom for all his scrapes and the couple are happily married.

            For the record, the plot-point of incest being averted was also used in Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (published seven years before Tom Jones) when, for a time, Joseph was led to believe that his beloved Fanny was actually his sister (she wasn’t, so happy ending). In fact this gag was pulled in many novels of the 18^th century. Further point – my favourite moment of repartee in Tom Jones comes in Book 13, Chapter 11, where Tom at last catches up with Sophia in London and declares “Oh! My Sophia, did you know the thousand torments I have suffered in this long, fruitless pursuit” to which Sophia replies dryly “Pursuit of whom?” Would that the lady were made of sterner stuff with regard to Tom’s promiscuous shagging when it comes to the unlikely happy ending!

Tom Jones was written in the early decades of the development of the English novel and it is impossible to comment on as we would comment on novels of more recent vintage. First, consider the specific historical setting. Fielding wrote this long novel between 1745 and 1748, letting friends read and comment on sections of it before it was published in 1749 (in six volumes). Being set in the year of the Jacobite rebellion, it is clearly on the side of the Hanoverian dynasty. Fielding wrote anti-Jacobite propaganda and, as a Protestant, excoriated the Catholic Young Pretender. So in Tom Jones there is the (very occasional) anti-Jacobite and anti-Catholic comment, and there is also the stand-alone “Man of the Hill” episode (Book 8) which gives a very Protestant account of the Monmouth Rebellion in the late 17^th century. Yet at the same time, Squire Western is a Jacobite sympathiser and there are some scenes in Tom’s journeys where it is clear that sections of the population expect the Young Pretender to win and are making plans to accommodate themselves to him. In other words, intentionally or otherwise, Fielding shows that there was much support for the Jacobite cause in England.

So much for the historical context, which will be of little concern to most readers of Tom Jones. What intrigues me is the question of how “conscious” or “unconscious” a novel it is – are the many coincidences, unlikely surprises, rambling picaresque events and long authorial comments simply the stock-in-trade of early novels; or are they artful and intentional on Fielding’s part? Every one of the novel’s 18 Books begins with a discourse by Fielding on the nature of fiction, especially on his favourite theme that he is drawing his characters from nature. He certainly saturates the tale with irony and shows awareness of the conventions of more fantastic fiction, which he frequently mocks. He addresses his readers directly, telling us, for example, when he is getting bored with a certain chapter and how he is going to end it, reminding us that this is, after all, a made-up story and that it has to observe certain rules and so on. And yet, of course, it is pre-modern, which may show us how nineteenth-century conventions of verisimilitude and author-invisibility have got in the way of more straightforward story-telling The (post-)modern self-conscious authorial voice may in fact be a reversion to the novel’s infancy.

Some of Fielding’s style does take some getting-used-to though, regardless of the novel’s place in literary history. Sometimes, with deliberately ironic effect,  he renders most dialogue in noble, elevated phraseology (except among the obviously low-life characters) – and yet this seems to be his habitual mode when he can’t be bothered rendering dialogue more colloquially. Squire Western veers between such artificial language, befitting a philosophical discourse, and broad West Country dialect. I can accept this as an amusing convention, but did find it irritating when it comes to Tom’s own language. True, he has been brought up in a gentleman’s household – albeit with the horrible Thwackum as his tutor – but by behaviour and external description Tom is essentially a naïve and trusting country chap, handsome enough for women to be fawning over him and really just one step up from the super-naïve Joseph Andrews. Yet Fielding gives Tom powers of expressing himself at need in a style that would have dazzled the best barrister. Classic example of this is in Book 14 where Tom persuades Nightingale (who is on the point of deserting the girl he has impregnated) to embrace duty, morality and true love… and of course Nightingale changes his mind and honourably marries the girl. Such scenes, where Tom improbably steps out of character, make Tom too much the puppet of the author.

Let’s consider Tom a bit more. The novel is very much an apologia for the likeable rascal with a healthy sexual appetite. Fielding is of course careful to show us that Tom is not a complete rascal. Tom has a strong sense of morality, as witnessed in the improbable Nightingale episode, which seems designed to tell us that Tom himself would not abandon a pregnant girl in need. Tom would no more think of not trusting Blifil than Squire Allworthy would until the last moments when Blifil’s treachery is revealed. On a number of occasions Tom is anxious to pay back money he has borrowed, he does not exploit people and he believes the best of them. Yet Tom, all the while protesting his fidelity to Sophia, does in the course of the novel find his way into the beds of Molly Seagrim, Mrs Waters and Lady Belleston. I suspect Fielding wanted to show us that a slightly-disordered sex-life is not necessarily as corrupting or evil a thing as, say, hypocrisy, venality and the type of ambitions that deform Blifil. Fair enough, I suppose, but there is still enough ammunition here to suggest that the novel really offers a defence of what would now be called the “double standard”. Sophia’s virginity is something to be celebrated and is one of her main attractions. Tom’s virginity is something to be cheerfully lost. In case I should seem to be imposing our present scale of values on a book written over 250 years ago, I note in fairness that Fielding does also stress the need for love and commitment in marriage; and another element of the plot is that Sophia is sturdy enough to refuse to marry men (Blifil; Lord Fellamar) whom she has not chosen herself but whom her father has at different times tried to impose upon her.

Of course there could be different ways of looking at Sophia. Is she Dulcinea to Tom’s Don Quixote? In other words, is she an unreal image of a woman who keeps the well-intentioned wandering adventurer going? (Remember Fielding was a devotee of Cervantes, as Joseph Andrews states overtly.) Perhaps not. Unlike the simple peasant girl Dulcinea, Sophia is seen and admired (and perhaps lusted after) by people other than Tom, and Fielding, speaking in his direct authorial voice, insists on Sophia’s goodness and purity to the very end. But the Cervantes comparison is still fruitful. After all, Tom’s moments of high rhetoric about true love are as easily punctured by Fielding’s irony as Quixote’s vision of Dulcinea is by the reality of the simple peasant girl.

Which brings me to the other major Cervantes influence in this novel. Partridge is almost Tom’s Sancho Panza – or at least his travelling companion for approximately half the length of the novel. But he is not a good Sancho Panza – unlike the Spanish original, he does not have a shrewd fund of peasant wisdom to call upon, but is a village pedant with a small stock of favourite Latin quotations, which he keeps repeating. As a comic character, I do not think he comes off. Having said this, though, I have to admit that Fielding was able to speak much more frankly about human nature – and especially sexual behaviour – than another great admirer of Cervantes one century later. This was William Makepeace Thackeray who, in his The Newcomes (reviewed on this blog) created a character (Colonel Newcome) specifically based on Don Quixote; but who, in the Victorian century, had to use euphemism when it came to sex. (The same was true of his Vanity Fair , where the real activities of the sexual adventuress Becky Sharp are cloaked in insinuation and nudge-and-wink language.) Fielding is far more forthright than Makepeace had to be. Just as a matter of interest, the other Victorian novelist who looked back to Fielding with admiration was Charles Dickens, and there are scenes in Tom Jones which inspired Dickens. There is an episode in Tom Jones where the literal-minded Partridge watches a performance of Hamlet and mistakes it for actual events. This is very much like Wopsle’s reaction to Hamlet in Dickens’ Great Expectations.

Thus far my own ideas on Tom Jones, but of course after reading a classic like this, I usually take a look at what other critics have to say. I learn the interesting fact that, when first published, Tom Jones was what we would now call a bestseller. It went through four printings in the first year it was published and 10,000 copies were sold – a huge number for 1749. In comparison, at the same time Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa took four years to sell 3,000 copies. Of course Richardson hated Tom Jones (look up on this blog an account of Richardson’s Pamela, which Fielding parodied mercilessly). Richardson thought Fielding’s characters were “low” and, like Dr. Johnson, thought Tom Jones was simply an apology for rakes. Stripped of class prejudices, the moral debate over the novel was that Fielding assumed morality consisted of instinctive human nature, and hence deprived morality of any guiding principles. Tom is “good” because he was born that way, not because he has reasoned anything out or has had to struggle through any moral dilemmas. And he is saved from the consequences of his actions by sheer plot contrivance. Thus, having been involved in a fierce fight, he avoids killing Fitzpatrick only because the man has such a strong constitution. Having slept with Mrs Waters, he is saved from incest only because, at the last moment, Fielding reveals that Mrs Waters is not his mother after all. [Fielding’s critics assume, rightly enough, that the chances of unwittingly committing incest are greatly increased if one is used to having sex promiscuously.] In effect, said Fielding’s critics, the novel reduces an apparently admirable man to an amiable, unreasoning animal. And it makes Squire Allworthy, supposedly the epitome of reasoned benevolence, a complete dupe until his eyes are opened not by his own insight, but by having other people reveal Blifil’s villainy to him. In passing, we might wonder how Allworthy has spent all these years living with Blifil, Thwackum and Square without once guessing their true characters. Is a man really “all worthy” to be so blind? Fielding may have had a good case in objecting to the prudential morality in Richardson’s Pamela, but Fielding’s critics score in pointing out the unthinking nature of morality as presented by Fielding, and the way Tom Jones misses out the complex of impulse, principle, rational thought and prudence that is in fact involved in all morality. Arguing “good nature” is avoiding the issue.

Or is all this being far to solemn about what is essentially a comic novel? We could argue that Fielding’s critics are missing out on the novel’s deliberate comic conventions – caricature and slapstick and a lack of ratiocination are part of the comic game. Tom Jones may be best read as something like the fable of Chaunticleer in which the boaster and dandy gets off scot-free, even if it wouldn’t happen that way in real life. The novel, then, is a sort of wish-fulfilment cloud-cuckoo land. We laugh because we know that, in fact, this is NOT the way things would turn out in reality, just as the novel’s dialogue conventions (of elevated vocabulary) are not meant to be taken literally. But if we adopt this line – which I think most readers probably do – we cannot also argue that Tom Jones is to be taken seriously in its moral perspective.

Speaking of taking this comic novel too seriously, I read what the cold, analytical bore F.R.Leavis had to say about it. This was the man who wanted every great novel to be as serious and moral as Middlemarch. Leavis thought all the characters in Tom Jones were mere caricatures with no inwardness of soul. Once it is established that Blifil is a hypocritical sneak and Tom is a good-hearted, sensuous young man, there is nothing more to be said about them. They simply act out their assigned roles without in any way growing and developing as real characters. Ingenuity of plot, says Leavis, is all that holds this picaresque novel together. In this Leavis might well be right, but he is still missing out on the nature of comedy.

Enough. By this stage you are bored – if you have read this far – with my extensive comments on a book which is, after all, intended to make us laugh. My chief quarrel with Tom Jones is simply that it is too damned long. For me, its 800 pages become repetitive and wearying. I kept thinking of Bill Shakespeare’s (probably unoriginal) remark that brevity is the soul of wit. For this reason, I favour the more modest length of Joseph Andrews over the rambling Tom Jones, even if both play upon the same sort of humour.

 

Inevitable Filmic Footnote: In 1963 Tony Richardson’s lively film version of Tom Jones was released to great applause, winning four Academy Awards,  giving a huge boost to Albert Finney’s career, being good box-office and persuading a Welsh crooner called Thomas John Woodward to change his stage name to Tom Jones. I have a vivid memory of this film. It was released in New Zealand in 1964, when I was all of thirteen years old. The censor had given it a restricted certificate, R16, meaning you had to be at least 16 if you wanted to see it. I went to see it with a classmate who was the same age as me but rather more sophisticated than me in negotiating adult prohibitions. He managed to bullshit the two of us into the theatre by claiming that we were 16, and though the usher gave us a sceptical look she let us in. We thought we were very naughty and daring and enjoyed the film as a straight comedy. It was lively and invigorating. Years later I saw this film again on television, but for some reason it had lost its lustre. Maybe it looked too much like film-making in the flashy swinging-London sixties. Ah well.

            Back in 1997 there was a BBC television serial adaptation of Tom Jones, starring the distinctly un-charismatic Max Beesley as Tom. It was a little plodding and stuck closely to the novel. I watched it with one of my daughters, who was then a teenager. When it finished I asked her what she thought of it. “Boys will be boys, I suppose” she said, which does more-or-less sum up the novel.