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THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, A FOUNDLING
by Henry Fielding
BOOK I
CONTAINING AS MUCH OF THE BIRTH OF THE FOUNDLING AS IS NECESSARY
OR PROPER TO ACQUAINT THE READER WITH IN THE BEGINNING OF THIS HISTORY
Chapter 1
The introduction to the work, or bill of fare to the feast
An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives
a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a
public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.
In the former case, it is well known that the entertainer provides
what fare he pleases; and though this should be very indifferent,
and utterly disagreeable to the taste of his company, they must not
find any fault; nay, on the contrary, good breeding forces them
outwardly to approve and to commend whatever is set before them. Now
the contrary of this happens to the master of an ordinary. Men who pay
for what they eat will insist on gratifying their palates, however
nice and whimsical these may prove; and if everything is not agreeable
to their taste, will challenge a right to censure, to abuse, and to
d--n their dinner without controul.
To prevent, therefore, giving offence to their customers by any such
disappointment, it hath been usual with the honest and well-meaning
host to provide a bill of fare which all persons may peruse at their
first entrance into the house; and having thence acquainted themselves
with the entertainment which they may expect, may either stay and
regale with what is provided for them, or may depart to some other
ordinary better accommodated to their taste.
As we do not disdain to borrow wit or wisdom from any man who is
capable of lending us either, we have condescended to take a hint from
these honest victuallers, and shall prefix not only a general bill
of fare to our whole entertainment, but shall likewise give the reader
particular bills to every course which is to be served up in this
and the ensuing volumes.
The provision, then, which we have here made is no other than
Human Nature. Nor do I fear that my sensible reader, though most
luxurious in his taste, will start, cavil, or be offended, because I
have named but one article. The tortise- as the alderman of Bristol,
well learned in eating, knows by much experience- besides the
delicious calipash and calipee, contains many different kinds of food;
nor can the learned reader be ignorant, that in human nature, though
here collected under one general name, is such prodigious variety,
that a cook will have sooner gone through all the several species of
animal and vegetable food in the world, than an author will be able to
exhaust so extensive a subject.
An objection may perhaps be apprehended from the more delicate, that
this dish is too common and vulgar; for what else is the subject of
all the romances, novels, plays, and poems, with which the stalls
abound? Many exquisite viands might be rejected by the epicure, if
it was a sufficient cause for his contemning of them as common and
vulgar, that something was to be found in the most paltry alleys under
the same name. In reality, true nature is as difficult to be met
with in authors, as the Bayonne ham, or Bologna sausage, is to be
found in the shops.
But the whole, to continue the same metaphor, consists in the
cookery of the author; for, as Mr. Pope tells us-
True wit is nature to advantage drest;
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well exprest.
The same animal which hath the honour to have some part of his flesh
eaten at the table of a duke, may perhaps be degraded in another part,
and some of his limbs gibbeted, as it were, in the vilest stall in
town. Where, then, lies the difference between the food of the
nobleman and the porter, if both are at dinner on the same ox or calf,
but in the seasoning, the dressing, the garnishing, and the setting
forth? Hence the one provokes and incites the most languid appetite,
and the other turns and palls that which is the sharpest and keenest.
In like manner, the excellence of the mental entertainment
consists less in the subject than in the author's skill in well
dressing it up. How pleased, therefore, will the reader be to find
that we have, in the following work, adhered closely to one of the
highest principles of the best cook which the present age, or
perhaps that of Heliogabalus, hath produced. This great man, as is
well known to all lovers of polite eating, begins at first by
setting plain things before his hungry guests, rising afterwards by
degrees as their stomachs may be supposed to decrease, to the very
quintessence of sauce and spices. In like manner, we shall represent
human nature at first to the keen appetite of our reader, in that more
plain and simple manner in which it is found in the country, and shall
hereafter hash and ragoo it with all the high French and Italian
seasoning of affectation and vice which courts and cities afford. By
these means, we doubt not but our reader may be rendered desirous to
read on for ever, as the great person just above-mentioned is supposed
to have made some persons eat.
Having premised thus much, we will now detain those who like our
bill of fare no longer from their diet, and shall proceed directly
to serve up the first course of our history for their entertainment.
Chapter 2
A short description of Squire Allworthy, and a fuller account of
Miss Bridget Allworthy, his sister
In that part of the western division of this kingdom which is
commonly called Somersetshire, there lately lived, and perhaps lives
still, a gentleman whose name was Allworthy, and who might well be
called the favourite of both nature and fortune; for both of these
seem to have contended which should bless and enrich him most. In this
contention, nature may seem to some to have come off victorious, as
she bestowed on him many gifts, while fortune had only one gift in her
power; but in pouring forth this, she was so very profuse, that others
perhaps may think this single endowment to have been more than
equivalent to all the various blessings which he enjoyed from
nature. From the former of these, he derived an agreeable person, a
sound constitution, a solid understanding, and a benevolent heart;
by the latter, he was decreed to the inheritance of one of the largest
estates in the county.
This gentleman had in his youth married a very worthy and
beautiful woman, of whom he had been extremely fond: by her he had
three children, all of whom died in their infancy. He had likewise had
the misfortune of burying this beloved wife herself, about five
years before the time in which this history chuses to set out. This
loss, however great, he bore like a man of sense and constancy, though
it must be confest he would often talk a little whimsically on this
head; for he sometimes said he looked on himself as still married, and
considered his wife as only gone a little before him, a journey
which he should most certainly, sooner or later, take after her; and
that he had not the least doubt of meeting her again in a place
where he should never part with her more- sentiments for which his
sense was arraigned by one part of his neighbours, his religion by a
second, and his sincerity by a third.
He now lived, for the most part, retired in the country, with one
sister, for whom he had a very tender affection. This lady was now
somewhat past the age of thirty, an aera at which, in the opinion of
the malicious, the title of old maid may with no impropriety be
assumed. She was of that species of women whom you commend rather
for good qualities than beauty, and who are generally called, by their
own sex, very good sort of women- as good a sort of woman, madam, as
you would wish to know. Indeed, she was so far from regretting want of
beauty, that she never mentioned that perfection, if it can be
called one, without contempt; and would often thank God she was not as
handsome as Miss Such-a-one, whom perhaps beauty had led into errors
which she might have otherwise avoided. Miss Bridget Allworthy (for
that was the name of this lady) very rightly conceived the charms of
person in a woman to be no better than snares for herself, as well
as for others; and yet so discreet was she in her conduct, that her
prudence was as much on the guard as if she had all the snares to
apprehend which were ever laid for her whole sex. Indeed, I have
observed, though it may seem unaccountable to the reader, that this
guard of prudence, like the trained bands, is always readiest to go on
duty where there is the least danger. It often basely and cowardly
deserts those paragons for whom the men are all wishing, sighing,
dying, and spreading every net in their power; and constantly
attends at the heels of that higher order of women for whom the
other sex have a more distant and awful respect, and whom (from
despair, I suppose, of success) they never venture to attack.
Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any farther together, to
acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as
often as I see occasion, of which I am myself a better judge than any
pitiful critic whatever; and here I must desire all those critics to
mind their own business, and not to intermeddle with affairs or
works which no ways concern them; for till they produce the
authority by which they are constituted judges, I shall not plead to
their jurisdiction.
Chapter 3
An odd accident which befel Mr. Allworthy at his return home. The
decent behaviour of Mrs. Deborah Wilkins, with some proper
animadversions on bastards
I have told my reader, in the preceding chapter, that Mr.
Allworthy inherited a large fortune; that he had a good heart, and
no family. Hence, doubtless, it will be concluded by many that he
lived like an honest man, owed no one a shilling, took nothing but
what was his own, kept a good house, entertained his neighbours with a
hearty welcome at his table, and was charitable to the poor, i.e.,
to those who had rather beg than work, by giving them the offals
from it; that he died immensely rich and built an hospital.
And true it is that he did many of these things; but had he done
nothing more I should have left him to have recorded his own merit
on some fair freestone over the door of that hospital. Matters of a
much more extraordinary kind are to be the subject of this history, or
I should grossly mis-spend my time in writing so voluminous a work;
and you, my sagacious friend, might with equal profit and pleasure
travel through some pages which certain droll authors have been
facetiously pleased to call The History of England.
Mr. Allworthy had been absent a full quarter of a year in London, on
some very particular business, though I know not what it was; but
judge of its importance by its having detained him so long from
home, whence he had not been absent a month at a time during the space
of many years. He came to his house very late in the evening, and
after a short supper with his sister, retired much fatigued to his
chamber. Here, having spent some minutes on his knees- a custom which
he never broke through on any account- he was preparing to step into
bed, when, upon opening the cloathes, to his great surprize he
beheld an infant, wrapt up in some coarse linen, in a sweet and
profound sleep, between his sheets. He stood some time lost in
astonishment at this sight; but, as good nature had always the
ascendant in his mind, he soon began to be touched with sentiments
of compassion for the little wretch before him. He then rang his bell,
and ordered an elderly woman-servant to rise immediately, and come
to him; and in the meantime was so eager in contemplating the beauty
of innocence, appearing in those lively colours with which infancy and
sleep always display it, that his thoughts were too much engaged to
reflect that he was in his shirt when the matron came in. She had
indeed given her master sufficient time to dress himself; for out of
respect to him, and regard to decency, she had spent many minutes in
adjusting her hair at the looking-glass, notwithstanding all the hurry
in which she had been summoned by the servant, and though her
master, for aught she knew, lay expiring in an apoplexy, or in some
other fit.
It will not be wondered at that a creature who had so strict a
regard to decency in her own person, should be shocked at the least
deviation from it in another. She therefore no sooner opened the door,
and saw her master standing by the bedside in his shirt, with a candle
in his hand, than she started back in a most terrible fright, and
might perhaps have swooned away, had he not now recollected his
being undrest, and put an end to her terrors by desiring her to stay
without the door till he had thrown some cloathes over his back, and
was become incapable of shocking the pure eyes of Mrs. Deborah
Wilkins, who, though in the fifty-second year of her age, vowed she
had never beheld a man without his coat. Sneerers and prophane wits
may perhaps laugh at her first fright; yet my graver reader, when he
considers the time of night, the summons from her bed, and the
situation in which she found her master, will highly justify and
applaud her conduct, unless the prudence which must be supposed to
attend maidens at that period of life at which Mrs. Deborah had
arrived, should a little lessen his admiration.
When Mrs. Deborah returned into the room, and was acquainted by
her master with the finding the little infant, her consternation was
rather greater than his had been; nor could she refrain from crying
out, with great horror of accent as well as look, "My good sir! what's
to be done?" Mr. Allworthy answered, she must take care of the child
that evening, and in the morning he would give orders to provide it
