| Author: | Henry Fielding |
| Isbn: | 2853997359 |
| Language: | English |
| Country: | England |
| Genre: | Chronicle of a journey |
| Editor: | Andrew Millar |
| Published: | 1755 (posthumous work) |
| Translator: | Nathalie Bernard (with a preface by Jean Viviès) |
| Pages: | 186 |
| Preceded By: | Amelia (novel) (1751), The Covent-Garden Journal (1752) |
The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (Journal d'un voyage de Londres à Lisbonne) is the last book written by Henry Fielding (1707-1754) when, ill and at the end of his tether, accompanied by his second wife Mary Daniel (Mary Fielding), one of his daughters Eleanor Harriot, the latter's friend Margaret Collier and two servants, the chambermaid Isabella Ash and the footman William, he set sail for Lisbon in the summer of 1754 aboard the Queen of Portugal. Subject to the whims of the commander and the vagaries of the weather, the ship, long deprived of wind, drifted up the Thames, then along the south coast, and it's only in the very last pages of the book that the sails swell and the real voyage begins. So, in many ways, Fielding's Diary is more about English shores and shores than about crossing the Bay of Biscay and arriving in Portugal.
This brief collection takes the form of a chronicle of day-to-day life, blending everyday anecdotes with a number of political and moral considerations about society and humanity in general. The tone is generally humorous, but there is a discreet stoicism in the face of suffering. Also included are numerous discussions about maritime law and, most importantly, Fielding's last action as a magistrate, a profession he has recently left by force of circumstance. The story is punctuated by a few witty portraits, some of which are not devoid of insular prejudice, but as in the novels, the picturesque is absent from the descriptions, which, with rare exceptions, follow the obligatory poetic language of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
The irony flows through the book from page to page, directed against certain characters, but above all against the narrator, more parodic than frankly satirical, always comic. It draws on several English travelogues, but essentially on the epics of Homer and Virgil, whose heroes, to varying degrees, represent the suffering passenger tossed about on the waves in search of a new homeland.
The diary of this crossing was published posthumously in January 1755, three months after the author's death and, ironically, ten months before the earthquake that prompted Voltaire to concern himself with divine Providence.
Portugal has long been a favorite destination for Englishmen, and many of them wrote about their travel impressions: for example, Richard Twiss sailed safely for five days from Falmouth to Lisbon in 1772; Joseph Baretti made the crossing in a week in 1760; and in 1787, it took William Beckford nine days to reach his destination. Fielding, for his part, took six weeks, so his Diary is more a chronicle of Ryde, Torbay and Rotherhithe than of Lisbon. His account gives the impression that a superior intelligence is working against him, his wife, the ship and its captain, while offering occasional flashes of hope that are quickly extinguished. Comic gems are thrown in for good measure, as when the sea spray ("tireless")[1] rushes into the cabin, pinning him and the captain to the floor as they struggle to swallow a bowl of soup. On the whole, however, the tone remains solemn and somber, without lapsing into the morbid.
"I could not help reflecting how often the greatest abilities lie wind-bound as it were in life; or if they venture out, and attempt to beat the seas, they struggle in vain against wind and tide, and if they have not sufficient prudence to put back, are most probably cast away on the rocks and quicksands, which are every day ready to devour them".
In 1753, Henry Fielding, a Bow Street magistrate in charge of criminal matters in Westminster and Middlesex, was riddled with disease. His large, asthmatic body was so riddled with gout and swollen with edema that surgeons had to operate several times a week. Now enormous but emaciated, almost impotent, he can only get around with great difficulty, supported by crutches. He took tar water and a milk diet, but nothing helped. In desperation, his doctors, John Ranby and in particular a newcomer, Dr. Joshua Ward, recommended a warmer climate than England, and after some hesitation, he decided to emigrate south. His first choice was Aix-en-Provence, but the long crossing of France seemed insurmountable, too tiring and very expensive. In the end, a sea route seemed best suited to his condition, but as there were no shipping lines between England and Marseille at the time, Portugal was finally chosen as the destination.
On June 26, 1754, after bidding farewell, Fielding left his London home and, after a bumpy two-hour journey, arrived at the port of Rotherhithe on the River Thames south of the capital. Almost immediately, he was winched aboard the Queen of Portugal, recommended by one of his brother John's neighbors, a certain Peter Taylor. The yacht is under the command of a seventy-year-old officer, whose name Fielding does not give, preserving the anonymity of this wolf of the sea who has had many adventures, which he will reveal to him in the form of confidences during the crossing. He is Commander Richard Veal, who has just lost his young wife and remains inconsolable.[2] His sensitivity is so exacerbated that when one of the kittens on board with him falls overboard, despite all the efforts made to recover it - the entire crew mobilized, the ship tacking from side to side - he cries out in heart-rending grief. The kitten is eventually rescued, but Fielding adds no comment, merely juxtaposing this exclusive love for a little beast with the officer's complete lack of empathy for his sailors.
The crew, meanwhile, as they hoist the impotent passenger onto the deck, openly mock and jeer him, while spectators look away "In my condition," Fielding writes with resigned bitterness, "I had to brave (I think I use the appropriate word) rows of sailors and bargemen, very few of whom spared me the compliment of their insults and jokes about my infirmity. No one who knows me could have thought for a moment that I blamed them, but it was a demonstration by example of the cruelty and inhumanity of human nature, which I have often witnessed with concern, and which makes the mind uneasy and leads it to entertain melancholy and disturbing thoughts".
Fielding has already started jotting down his impressions in a small notebook, which he keeps secret.
The ship is moored at the quayside, reluctant to set sail, as the captain is looking for more passengers and freight to make the trip more profitable. After a long wait, he finally decides to sail slowly down the Thames, where, shortly after departure, he is involved in a collision with two other ships. As the damage was not serious and was repaired fairly quickly (a few days were enough), the route continued at the mercy of the winds, which remained desperately weak. The yacht drifted along the river, aided by the ebbing tides, then skirted the coast as far as the Isle of Wight and Cornwall, without being able to turn towards the ocean. Stops are numerous, allowing passengers to go ashore, eat in inns and sometimes spend the night. Fielding complains about the rudeness of some of the innkeepers, in particular a Mrs Francis to whom he went at Ryde and who served spartan and unappetizing food at exorbitant prices, but most of the time he is obliged to stay on board, where he shares a cabin with the captain, whose snoring keeps him awake: next door is a seasick passenger who moans incessantly. He's not feeling well and can't stand the swell when the ship finally sets sail for the Bay of Biscay. There, the wind drops and once again holds back the travelers; the lull, which is altogether restful, allows Fielding to reflect on the confrontation between man and the elements: to the commander who claims to be "bewitched", he remarks that his "absolute power on board arouses only the indifference of the wind". It also gives the crew the opportunity to capture a shark, a delightful addition to the ordinary. One evening, almost at the end of the voyage, Fielding and his family rest on deck as the blazing sun sets and a silver moon rises. A magical moment," writes the traveler in one of his few evocative comments,"enough to make us forget all the suffering we had endured up to that point. The book is full of anecdotes, says Fielding: " some of the most amusing pages, if, indeed, there be any that deserve that name, were possibly the production of the most disagreeable hours that ever haunted the author ".
The boat arrived in Lisbon on August 7; Fielding, at first dazzled by its whiteness (at a distance, "de loin"), found the city he crossed in his cabriolet "the most unpleasant in the world" (nastiest in the world), without the slightest beauty, decrepit and dirty, with buildings that seem to be piled jumbled one on top of the other, as if they all seemed to have but one foundation. Immediately, but this only appears in his letters, he feels nostalgia for England, writing movingly to his brother John that he dreams of a bunch of turnips, accompanied by good Cheshire and Stilton cheeses, just right. Prices, he explains to his publisher, are three times higher than in England. In the same letter, he announces that he has almost finished the story of his voyage, and that it is the best of all his works.Two months later, on October 8, 1754, he died.
The two editions published in 1755 differ in many respects, and according to Martin C. Battestin, neither presents the original in its entirety. It was probably left, in an unfinished state, in the hands of an amanuensis, perhaps William Aldrit, the servant who accompanied the couple to Lisbon and whose secretarial activity was later revealed.[3]
The first printing, The Francis Version, by William Straham, must have been retouched, perhaps by the author's brother John Fielding, suggests Tom Keymer, annotator of the Penguin edition. This same John then embarked on a more ambitious revision, with multiple cuts, and it was probably this version, dubbed The Humphry's Version, that appeared in December 1755, just as the disaster that struck Lisbon on November 1 seemed a godsend for publisher Andrew Millar, since any publication relating to the Portuguese capital would henceforth arouse public curiosity and multiply sales.
The first version remains the best, writes Tom Keymer, as it neither alters nor weakens the text, preserving in particular its satire and humor. The difference lies mainly in Fielding's portrayal, without naming him, of Commander Richard Veal, whom, despite a few admonitions, he befriended during the six-week crossing before becoming exasperated with him in Lisbon. In the second version, for example, the paragraph describing him is stripped of all the picturesque details of his clothing, decorations and swaggered appearance, and of his claim to gentlemanly status, which Fielding undermines in one or two formulas by showing how he behaves. On the other hand, references to his bravery are retained, albeit reduced to a few words, but references to his age (seventy), deafness and thundering voice are omitted. A single sentence has replaced five, devoid, moreover, of any asperity, which is also the case of the entire Diary, polished, respectful, Fielding's sharpness and ardor having been, according to Tom Keymer, as "covered with ashes".
The Penguin edition, the reference edition, reproduces the Francis version; changes have been kept to a minimum, even spelling variants have been retained. On the other hand, typos have been corrected, some capital letters added, quotation marks inserted; some erroneous dates from mid-July onwards have been reinstated in accordance with the chronology: indeed, July 14th is noted as being the 19th and the last date mentioned is that of Monday 22nd, after which only the days of the week are indicated, right up to the end of the voyage, on Wednesday August 7th 1754.
Fielding's Diary first appeared in a much-publicized version, published for the benefit of his family, but much shorter than that retained by Arthur Murphy (which serves as the reference for this article), the omitted passages relating mainly to his reflections on the ship's commander. There is, however, another, earlier edition that contains them. This editing problem, it is written in the unsigned introduction to the Project Gutenberg text, deserves clarification.[4] For additional explanations, the author refers to the analysis of "Mr Dobson", who also published a separate edition of the book. Arthur Dodson writes that the first edition, initiated by Fielding's half-brother John, with whom he had worked extensively, and entrusted to the usual editor Andrew Millar, contains another text (a companion piece), known as Fragment on Bolingbroke (full title: Fragment of a Comment on Lord Bolingbroke's Essays), extracted from a reply by Fielding to Lord Bolingbroke.[5] The release of the set was carefully prepared by a series of announcements left in the Public Advertiser, first the mention of Thursday February 6, 1755, then the usual publisher's details: "Tuesday, the 25th current, will be published in a volume duodeceimo, price 3s., bound, for the benefit of his wife and children, Journal d'un Voyage à Lisbonne. By the late Henry Fielding, Esq. To which is added Fragment of his Reply to Lord Bolingbroke, on sale at Andrew Millar's on the Strand". This was how the book was regularly advertised until this Tuesday 25th, when the text of the insert was changed to "Today appears [...]"
The earliest readers already knew that Fielding's pen had come to a definitive end. In the months leading up to publication, funeral notices and tributes had multiplied in the press, especially in the Public Advertiser and the Whitehall Journal, which had prepared the public for "a work begun in suffering and ended practically at the same time as life". The Whitehall Journal, however, openly questioned whether the author's declining health, and in particular the serious damage to his liver, among many others, had altered his innermost being, by which was meant his creative faculties.
Many contemporary readers, in fact, felt offended that such a great author should preoccupy himself, in the face of death, with the small details of ordinary life, employing his talent to describe insignificant encounter characters, mere anonymous passengers aboard a raft bound for Portugal. Perhaps, as André Darlington points out, they had forgotten that his novels differed from those of his predecessors and contemporaries precisely because they broke away from the traditional mold to focus on seemingly unimportant facts and incidents, all of which were related to the general scheme and, through their accumulation, contributed to its substance, anchoring it in history, topography and everyday life. In addition, the Journal de la traversée aimed to highlight obsolete passenger transport laws and put forward proposals for their improvement. But it's a fact that in the months following Amelia, with the exception of fierce battles with The Covent-Garden Journal, Fielding was more concerned with tar water, as recommended by the Irishman George Berkeley in Siris,[6] for example, or with the Duke of Portland's powder (or Mirandole powder), The Diary gives an image of the author above all in the grip of failing health, with confinement, stasis, physical impotence and anguish all intertwined with a politico-social vision that was always acute and innovative. In this respect, Monika Aliker Rabb has said that the work was born of the antagonism between "public and private responsibility".[7]
On the other hand, the mixture of the serious and the ridiculous, the grave and the comic, disconcerted many readers. Thomas Edwards, an erudite poet, said he was "astonished that a man who had lived such a life should waste his time in such banter while he was dying a slow death". Arthur Murphy, meanwhile, deplored the fact that the latter work "places us in the frame of mind of a condemned man joking on the scaffold".
In fact, Fielding was fully aware that he was living out his final months; in this comic vein he adopted a dialogue with suffering and death. Sterne would soon write Tristram Shandy, about which he would say that "every word was written in pain and discomfort of spirit", recalling also that Cervantes had written "his humorous satire" in prison and Scarron "his in anguish and suffering". Thus Fielding finds himself "confined within a circle of a few yards", and far from diverting his attention from his infirmities, takes a very lucid look at the progressive decomposition of his body.
The book begins with an unsigned dedication to the public, extending over some six pages, presumably from the pen of Arthur Murphy, who refers to the author in the third person.
From the outset, the reader's indulgence is solicited, on the pretext that "an almost extinguished lamp does not emit a light as frank and uniform as when it shines in all its vigor". Emphasis is placed on Fielding's emaciated yet swollen body, his shaky hand, the lack of vital strength that "this little work" bears witness to. Another excuse presented is the justification for the numerous references to travelers' conversations: at least they enable us to form an authentic impression of people and things, customs differing from place to place, far more pleasant and instructive to rub shoulders with than the rolling hills, valleys and rivers. Then comes the compliment: the art of communication, far from being shared by all travelers, but which the author still possesses to the highest degree, knowing how to embellish his style with appropriate ornaments, not without resemblance to Homer and Fenelon who, in the Odyssey and Telemachus, showed the way, albeit with less rigor than Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon. On this account, criticism of the book can only come from "ignorant and ignorant people, who have never traveled either in books or on a ship". What's more, the banal incidents of daily life on board or alongside a ship are not presented to the public for their picturesque or documentary value, but because they carry in their wake observations and reflections intended to educate as well as inform. The fact that they are usually narrated "in an air of joke and laughter" does not call for censorship any more than Horace's Satires. If, however, a recalcitrant reader were to be found, he or she would do well to remember that the story remains useful to the public, for it is not a question of invention but of reality, accompanied by political considerations, in particular on laws concerning maritime affairs, "a more modest undertaking, to be sure, but more accessible than reforming an entire people".
It's hard to disentangle the seriousness of the joke, as Fielding riddles his speech with notations or allusions that seem to undermine it as it unfolds. The process, analyzed below, is complex, subtle and highly erudite, as Tom Keymer explains at length in the notes to the Penguin edition. Be that as it may, this rather long preface - six pages in the reference edition - is not unlike that of Joseph Andrews, in that it is intended to be didactic. It focuses on travel literature, its methods and results. It advocates an excellent knowledge of the subject, a certain lightness of tone and a polished style. The traveler entrusting his story to the public must be talented, a gift that nature distributes sparingly.
Some examples are highlighted, such as Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715) and his writings on his travels in Switzerland and Italy (1687), Addison (1672-1719) for his descriptions of Italian provinces (1705); others are dismissed with boredom, Dr. Zachary Grey (1686-1766) in particular, too detailed, too redundant in his edition of Samuel Butler's Hudibras (1744). This is followed by a wide-ranging discussion of the respective merits of Homer and Fénelon, whose epics are to travel writing what the novel is to history, unlike the works of the great Greek historians. This is followed by a discussion of the respective merits of Pliny the Elder (here criticized for the fantastical aspects of certain parts of his Natural History), Sallustus, Titus Livius (although he tends to embellish the reported facts with his own eloquence), the Englishman Lord Anson for his account of a voyage around the world (1748), whose preface claims to be totally faithful to lived reality, and Horace. He also recalls his own Shamela, whose letters signed Yourself and John Puff burlesquely imitate Samuel Richardson's Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded. From the same author, he mocks the preface to Clarissa, a novel he admired;[8] but Richardson having criticized his Amelia[9] and Fielding having got wind of it, he is less indulgent here.
The book ends with a profession of faith stating that its primary aim is to serve as a vehicle for the reform of Admiralty law.
While an integral part of the narrative, it focuses on the two years preceding the trip to Lisbon, the first date mentioned being August 1753. The comments are mainly medical: the medicines prescribed for gout, a cure in Bath recommended by Mr. Randy, the King's first surgeon.
There remain certain tasks to be accomplished, plans to be drawn up to put an end to the murders and thefts committed daily on the public highway: several detailed pages drafted in four days. With the approval of the authorities, in particular the Duke of Newcastle, a member of the Privy Council, Fielding received £600 and immediately set to work, despite his extreme fatigue, to "demolish the gangs in action and act in such a way that such associations cannot in future re-form, or at the very least intimidate the public". The success of his action is such that Fielding evokes "the word VANITY", which might come to the reader's lips, but immediately recalls the meager emoluments that are his for a job of "sixteen hours out of twenty-four in a most unhealthy and nauseating universe and having, as it is, corrupted a robust constitution for want of moral integrity". His reflections insist on this financial aspect: he recalls that he received an annual pension from the government, insufficient in his eyes for the work accomplished, which led him to resign and entrust his responsibilities to his brother, who had long served as his assistant. He then closes this chapter of his life and proclaims that he has tried, in vain it seems, to keep his family out of want. Sacrifice himself for public service, yes, but not with Spartan or Roman-style patriotism, for "I solemnly declare that I have this love for my family".
The declaration of literary intent follows: the facts recounted are purely and simply as they were, for the world to draw whatever conclusions it wishes. Only then is there any further mention of his health in the months leading up to his departure. A first puncture in the abdomen relieves him of fourteen quarts of fluid, i.e. almost sixteen liters; diaphoretic drugs have no effect on him;[10] only a further puncture, which frees him of thirteen quarts of fluid, and above all a dose of laudanum, which plunges him into "the most delicious state of mind, and then into a most comforting sleep", bring him some measure of well-being.
In May (1754), Fielding decided to move to a small house he had rented in Ealing, in the Middlesex countryside, "the best air, I understand, in the whole kingdom, [...] higher up and facing south, protected from the breeze by a row of hills and from the smells and smoke of London by the distance". The sun was out for only three days, and "like fruit that has ripened in the shade without gaining in ripeness", his illness, far from losing ground, progressed stealthily, so that the prospect of an early winter before he could regain his strength began to nag at him. A temporary ray of light in this situation, the hope that the tar water described by the Bishop of Berkeley in Nouvelles réflexions sur l'eau de tar, published in 1752, and mentioned by Charlotte Ramsay Lennox's Female Quixote, might put an end to his torments. The idea of moving to milder climes came back to her mind, as it had already done, and very quickly, Aix-en-Provence having been ruled out, a voyage by river and sea was chosen, departing from Gravesend in Kent.[11] The ship would set sail within three days, said John Fielding, the brother who had taken over the judicial responsibilities and was organizing the voyage, so the Fieldings were in a hurry; in reality, as mentioned above, the delays would be much longer, with the commander postponing his departure at least twice.
It begins and is dated Wednesday, June 26, 1754, at the door of the Fielding home.
There is an entry for almost every day, with the exception of a few Sundays. The last entry is on August 7, 1755, in the bay of Lisbon, a city built like Rome on seven hills. Fielding admires the rows of whitewashed houses, but hastily brings this early description to a close, banishing all picturesqueness in accordance with a principle often evoked in the introductory chapters of his novels, particularly Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones. The diary ends with two Latin quotations, the first taken from the Aeneid and the second from Horace: "Egressi optata Troes potiuntur arena" ("The Trojans disembark and gain the long-awaited shore")[12] and "- hic Finis chartæque viaque" ("here end, 'merrily', writes Fielding ironically, the story and the voyage").[13] Indeed, administrative formalities keep him on board until 7 p.m., and the meal served in a hillside café, while excellent, is as expensive as "on the Bath road between Newbury and London".
The intermediate entries vary greatly in length: the one for Friday June 28, for example, barely half a page long, reports just the arrival on board - the ship has not yet weighed anchor - of Dr. Hunter, who is puncturing the patient with ten quarts of water, and a brief conversation with the captain, during which Fielding expresses his indifference as to the timing of the departure, which is dragging on and on; after which great satisfaction is expressed on both sides. Basically, the passenger trusts this officer, all the more so as on this day, with no hope of embarking other passengers or goods, the order is finally given to begin the descent of the Thames towards Gravesend. By contrast, the following entry, dated Sunday June 30, covers eight pages and is packed with anecdotes and reflections: toothache of Mrs Fielding, Wapping's expert surgeon; as the boat drifts with the tide, the lady refuses to follow it from the shore, while the valet sent ashore has all the trouble in the world to get back on board, as the breeze swells the sails and we're sailing at 8 knots. In addition to a few bitter comments on human ingratitude - the commander, after all, had not warned anyone of his intention to reach the Kent Downs[14] under forced sail, even though Fielding had told him of his patience the very day before - this is an opportunity for the traveler to describe the shoreline as seen from the deck or his cabin.These descriptions, which are actually quite rare, have nothing of the picturesque about them, a notion virtually banished from the literature of the first half of the 18th century. The terms remain general and stereotyped, derived from the old poetic diction of John Dryden (1631-1700) in the previous century, or James Thomson (1700-1748), Fielding's contemporary. Neutral adjectives line up: fair and bright for the weather ("beautiful, sunny"), pleasant and noble for the Deptford shipyards ("pleasant, imposing").
Much more precise is the vocabulary relating to Fielding's illness, as his Diary takes an unflinching look at the decomposition of his body: flashes of health are rare, and the work reads like that of a lucid moribund, hoping "to live to finish it, which is doubtful and for which I hold out little hope, the last, at any rate, that I shall undertake". In fact, as the diary unfolds, the ailment grows worse: jaundice, asthma and edema seem to combine their destructive forces to besiege this enormous yet emaciated body, deprived of all muscular strength, no doubt suffering from cirrhosis of the liver coupled with cancer of the peritoneum. Fielding summed up the situation in a laconic phrase: "Now, by all accounts, I was dying of a combination of conditions".
The whole book is haunted by illness, similar on an individual level to the slow, universal decomposition recounted by Defoe in his Journal of the Plague Years, with the same statistical concern, the same accounting precision. Death hovers at every turn of the page, "death from fatigue", "dead weight", "rotting body". The frankness of this statement is all the more striking given that Fielding secretly cursed his landlady at Ryde during his stay on the Isle of Wight, for tactlessly wishing him better health while hiding a mirror so that he couldn't contemplate his physical decline. It's as if the act of writing finally allowed the author to face up to the sordid reality that is impossible in real life.
This fallen body evolves in a fundamentally hostile world, also prey to decay and suffering, a picture Fielding paints with obsessive meticulousness, all the misfortunes around seeming to stem from his own. The tone is "solemnly urbane", writes Tom Keemer, but with comic jabs at everyday annoyances and frustrations, as when the need for an urgent puncture is echoed by his wife's toothache. Neither the surgeon nor the tooth puller can ever seem to be found, as the boat sets sail at the wrong moment; the scene is repeated from Rotherhithe to Deal, with the sea suddenly becoming stormy and literally twisting my bowels out of my belly.Then his own teeth refuse to bite into a portion of duck that's as congruous as it is dry; in short, everything goes wrong. There are a few bright spots in this tohu-bohu of suffering, however: a cat from the shore falls into the sea and the boatswain dives in to fish it out, allowing Fielding to add a mischievous aside about the commandant. There's no shortage of analogies that constantly bring him back to his own mortality: the death of the minister (Henry Pelham), the loss of a tooth, the elements heckling the whole of creation, a fruit that's too hard, even the passing seasons, all gather and concentrate to return like a beam tip to lodge in his suffering. Each struggle evokes personal echoes, and as a helpless observer of the universal decomposition in which his own is partaking, he lines up resigned "I saw" in parallel, increasingly condensed phrases.
« I saw the summer mouldering away, or rather, indeed, the year passing away without intending to bring on any summer at all. In the whole month of May the sun scarce appeared three times. So that the early fruits came to the fullness of their growth, and to some appearance of ripeness, without acquiring any real maturity; having wanted the heat of the sun to soften and meliorate their juices. I saw the dropsy gaining rather than losing ground; the distance growing still shorter between the tappings. I saw the asthma likewise beginning again to become more troublesome. I saw the midsummer quarter drawing towards a close. »
A parallel is drawn between the movements of the ship and the fluctuations of the affliction besetting the patient: let the wind blow, and a remission sets in, Fielding writing as if body and hull escape their painful fate for a moment; the anchor is raised as water is punctured from his bruised belly; the sails swell and the edema loses its aggression; the ship is becalmed and the body swells again. What's more, the sick man becomes representative of the human being grappling with forces beyond his control, and his ailment extends into the public domain. There is a connection between the physical body and the body politic, concerning not only the fundamental laws, but also "the customs, behavior and habits of the people".
The idea of the state as a "body politic" recurs frequently in Fielding's writings when he discusses the evils he calls "civic ills". In The Historical Register, he writes that "corruption has the same effect on all societies, all bodies, as it has on the body of man, where we find that it always leads to total destruction". The avarice and corruption of the ruling elite had long been among his favorite targets; analogies between the public and private, even intimate, spheres are everywhere in his polemical writings, particularly in An Enquiry into the Late Increase of Robbers, in which Fielding mocks the great and the good of this world, then inserts this paragraph[15]
« The great Increase of Robberies within these few years, is an Evil which […] seems (tho' already so flagrant) not to have arrived to that Height of which it is capable, and which it is likely to attain: For Diseases in the Political, as in the natural Body, seldom fail going on their Crisis, especially when nourished and encouraged by Faults in the Constitution. »The Journal abounds in gloomy analyses of a society vitiated at every level by the corruption of a greedy, unscrupulous elite: the state is eaten away from top to bottom, humanity is given over to savagery and parasitism. The petty extortions of innkeepers and bargemen are inspired by a government that exonerates itself of all burdens, the rich fatten themselves on turtle fillets while the poor have their stomachs tied in knots by hunger. At every level of the community, it's all rot, lethargy, asthenia - in short, the state is in need of medical attention, and the Journal intends, among other things, to "propose the remedies, [...] show how easily to cure it [...] and [denounce] the shameful neglect of this lack of treatment". Here, Fielding equates his fight against disease with his fight to eradicate crime: political metaphor and physical reality lend a hand, but in reality his public battle was waged at the expense of his bodily integrity: the more crime was curbed, the more jaundice, dropsy and asthma flourished. Fielding drained the poison from society, while the poison from his own body accumulated.
Nathalie Bernard believes that "Henry Fielding's experience as a magistrate and journalist has profoundly influenced his latest work, but the elements selected [...] do not really serve the stated didactic purpose. The numerous references to food throughout the narrative lead the reader to believe that the selection made [...] during the preparation of the Diary is more a matter of personal obsession than of the public interest claimed by the text".[16]
Nonetheless, it seems that Fielding's work as a judge was always in mind, and is amply reflected in his Diary. He uses it to offer advice to legislators, posing as a monitor, i.e. "one who warns of faults, or informs of duty". In this, he takes up the role he played in his journals, in particular the Jacobite's Journal and The Covent-Garden Journal, where, following the example of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, he claimed the role of "censor" of the realm, in the sense that this function had in Rome, "the one who had the power of correcting manners".[17] Here, however, he temporarily moves away from satire to recommend new measures to break the cartel of the wealthy who starve the people.
The connection between the magistrate and the author conscious of writing his last book is preserved: right to the end, Fielding wanted to make himself useful; as he writes not without gravity, "I have scattered my various remarks throughout this journey, rather satisfied to end my life as I have probably lost it, in the service of my country".
Fielding's Journal, even in its most solemn moments, follows an almost uninterrupted ironic thread that takes many forms.
It's as if the author were incapable of presenting a serious argument without lapsing into the comedy of parodic puffery. Thus, when he launches into a recapitulation of the benefits of fish, in the style of A Proposal for Making an Effectual Provision for the Poor (1753),[18] his claim that a rigged market deprives the poor of this manna quickly turns into derision: "I first propose in all humility that all fishmongers should be hanged under the laws of morality; though some softer minds and incapable of decision may have thought the evil could be eradicated by gentler methods, I presume there is no one today to judge that such an attitude has any chance of achieving any result". Here, Fielding proceeds as Jonathan Swift before him might have proposed cannibalism as a remedy for the famine ravaging Ireland. The sternness of the proposal is quickly put into perspective: after his diatribe against the gluttons and profiteers who gorge themselves at the expense of those who have nothing to eat, Fielding adds: "After, however, having regaled myself with this food, I accompanied its descent with a good claret".
In other passages, Fielding employs a bolder, even "strange" mode of irony, writes Tom Keymer, consisting in undermining his claims and proposals with references to notoriously grotesque authorities: for example, comparing himself not to Cervantes but to his fanciful metafictional narrator, Cide Hamete Benengeli. In this, if he is apparently faithful to what he announced in his preface ("to present my remarks and recommendations with the air of playing and laughing at them"), he makes good measure, matching his remarks with an obviously amused swelling, for example: "I come directly to the praise that this work [his Diary] obviously deserves, about which I could certainly say a thousand good things", or referring to Samuel Richardson's theories on instruction to justify his own, immediately assuring us that they are only fit for the wastepaper basket, and, by way of conclusion, declaring his desire to bring about a veritable legal revolution in maritime affairs, similar to that advocated for the theater in The Rehearsal, a play in which an author, a director with ideas, gives actors instructions as absurd as they are zany and critical of the importance of their role.
The height of ambiguous subtlety is undoubtedly reached when Fielding pleads for a posthumous pension to guarantee his family against need. He argues that such a gesture on the part of the competent authorities would encourage young magistrates to the same efforts as his own, and to corroborate his thesis, he gives two examples, one of punishment and the other of reward.
« "For it is very hard, my lord," said a convicted felon at the bar to the late excellent judge Burnet, "to hang a poor man for stealing a horse." "You are not to be hanged sir," answered my ever-honoured and beloved friend, "for stealing a horse, but you are to be hanged that horses may not be stolen". In like manner it might have been said to the late Duke of Marlborough, when the parliament was so deservedly liberal to him, after the battle of Blenheim, "You receive not these honours and bounties on account of a victory past, but that other victories may be obtained.»The passage is clear on the surface: the enrichment of Marlborough, whom Fielding nevertheless admired, was amply deserved, and the punishment inflicted on the thief by his friend Burnet entirely justified. However, the swelling of the compliments makes the commentary suspect: "the late excellent Judge Burnet", "my forever honored and loved friend", further on "a model of indulgence", all dithyrambic formulas that contrast with the coldness shown by this remarkable magistrate when he announces to the poor man that his neck is going to be broken clean off. His volubility is all the more suspicious given Fielding's reservations about capital punishment elsewhere, his disapproval of the public nature of hangings, his recommendation that they be carried out in private, and his outrage at the harshness of certain sentences, which are shamefully unjust when they strike poor wretches driven to delinquency by want and need: it is "a dreadful thing," he wrote, "that so many cartloads of our fellow citizens are driven to the slaughterhouse every six weeks".[19] [20] When Fielding refers to Burnet, the memory of Pope is not far away, for the judge bears a strong resemblance to those in The Rape of the Lock :
The hungry Judges soon the Sentence signThe same ambiguity prevails when the Duke of Marlborough finds himself so openly adored, for this general was at the root of one of the greatest scandals of his time. His Blenheim Palace soon became the source of political intrigue that led to his exile, the Duchess's disgrace and irreparable damage to the reputation of the architect, Sir John Vanbrugh. Swift had meddled in the affair, comparing the cost of the award to that of the laurels crowning the brow of a victorious general at Rome,[21] and Fielding had already associated Prime Minister Walpole's notoriously wealth-hungry family with that of the Malboroughs, writing in 1735 in the Craftsman that "the conduct of the former had proved to the government his wisdom, success and glory just as that of the other had done on the field of battle".[22]And Wretches hang that Jury may dine
There the perfidiously eulogistic comments cease; Fielding then returns to a brief lightening from which his state benefits by indirectly referring to the horse thief: "If they don't hang me at this session," he writes, "they're sure to do it at the next"
In his preface, Fielding makes a vague allusion to a play, whose title he never gives, "by Aphra Behn or Susanna Centlivre," in which "this vice of travel journals is ridiculed with finesse".
Undoubtedly, he is referring primarily to Aphra Behn's[23] The Feign'd Curtezans, in which Timothy Tickletext, tutor to Sir Signal Buffoon, combines the ignorance of a coarse philistine with the self-importance he confers. Tickletext wanders around Rome, which he deems far inferior to the English capital: buildings, fountains, statues, churches ("the most dreadful I have ever seen"), all of which he records in a diary crammed with banalities about the weather, thunder, lightning and rain, in his opinion "the most memorable and remarkable events of the day".[24] On his return, Tickletext intends to publish his work "for the good of the nation".[25]
The fact that Fielding declares in his own Diary, in an image of circumstance, that he wishes to avoid such a course (to steer clear) seems to show that he is making a mockery of so-called travel writing. Yet he often falls into the same trap as Tickletext, blind as he is to the splendors of a capital which, before the catastrophe of 1755, was considered one of the jewels of Europe; boasting as he does that the comparison with England can only fill him with pride; proclaiming as he does that his work will be of "public utility": in short, the reader is left with the impression that, paradoxically, the reference to Aphra Behn's play openly states what his book should not be, but in fact proves to be a life-size example of the genre he intends to ridicule.That said, he gently mocks the fastidious accuracy of the most famous travel book of the time, Voyage around the world, published in 1748, and is quick to describe the rest as "heaps of dulness".
Nevertheless, his diary shows that he was familiar with these "deadly dull" works, especially those about Lisbon, such as Udal ap Rhys's Account of the Most Remarkable Places and Curiosities in Spain and Portugal (1749) and Wiliam Bromley's Several Years Travels through Portugal, Spain, etc. (1702). The latter, in opposition to King William III, had to spend much of his life abroad, where he traveled, especially in the Iberian Peninsula: scandalized by the monks' Lenten processions, which he considered idolatrous, he had nothing but contempt for Portuguese churches and Lisbon Cathedral, neither large nor beautiful, not to mention the city itself, with its many hills, where he saw only a labyrinth of steep, rising streets between disproportionately tall buildings, all the more rebellious to walking that the dirt and stench oozing from their ambient humidity added to their discomfort.[26] By contrast, Udal ap Rhys, in conventional style, swoons with enthusiastic admiration for Lisbon, whose magnificence he finds equal to that of Rome of the seven hills: everything there is "beautiful", of "unspeakable splendor", of an "infinite variety of sumptuous edifices"; the surrounding countryside is "delicious", gorged with "succulent" fruit, embalmed with "most fragrant" wild flowers as if arising "under the enchanting foot of a poet's mistress", with seasons abolished in favor of an "eternal spring".[27] It's an accumulation of stereotypical banalities that Fielding avoids, after more or less reproducing them at first, only to fall, with the same conventional style, into their equally overblown inverse, those of William Bromley.
According to Fielding, Homer and Virgil also wrote travelogues in their own way (Homer himself is by some considered as a voyage-writer), and since the profession of faith expressed in Joseph Andrews' preface, defining his novel as "a comic Epic-Poem in Prose",[28] he has rarely departed from this form of writing. The Diary is no exception, with its many references to the Odyssey and the Aeneid. Admittedly, his preface sternly banishes the temptation of such devices, "tending to pervert and blur with fanciful features the legacy of Antiquity". His story, he points out, is in no way a work of fiction, but allows itself a few embellishments "of style and language, even of events". Fielding thus insinuates that he sometimes embellishes the facts, which he later confirms when he likens this poetic license to the report of the sailor who "faithfully relates what happened on his ship, we say faithfully, though, to what happened, it is safe to surmise that Tom made the choice of a few additions, perhaps five or six unimportant circumstances, as is always the case, I understand, and also to suppose that I acted in the same way in telling this story"
Once again, the reader is faced with a contradiction, as if the narrator were constantly teasing him, denigrating fiction here, and immediately undermining its apparent resolution there. The Diary's priorities are therefore elsewhere: neutral documentary material treated in an artistic manner,[29] that is, transformed and often reflecting on characters, facts or scenes already dealt with in the novels: thus, it has been noted that Ryde's innkeeper, Mrs Francis is not without resemblance to Joseph Andrews' Mrs To-wouse, or even Mrs Jewkes in Richardson's Pamela or Virtue Rewarded.[30] In short, Fielding remains true to his preface, in which he stipulates that literary effect is as important as raw fact.
For Tom Keymer, this somewhat romanticized approach to events allows Fielding to parody the travel literature he claims to distance himself from, that of Bromley and Rhys, which he uses to exaggerate the xenophobia of the former and contradict the extravagance of the latter. Thus, the anecdote of the capture of a shark in the Bay of Biscay seems to him "absolutely in keeping with the rules and customs of travel literature". As for Fielding's insistence on the public usefulness of his book, a passage of junk Swiftian erudition in which he makes a solemn appeal for the election of a "Society of Antiquarians", this is self-parody.
Fielding's ironically pseudo-heroic use of the Odyssey and the Aeneid, in which he portrays himself as a retarded Odysseus or Aeneas, is more direct, openly directed against himself, whose posture and destiny he ridicules: he plays on the traditional assimilation of London to Troy[31] and on the legend attributing the founding of Lisbon to Odysseus.[32]
Certain echoes are obvious. For example, when he likens his departure from London to Aeneas' flight from Troy, the comparison is explicit: "the same wind that Juno would have solicited from Aeolus if Aeneas had had to set sail for Lisbon in our latitudes", an analogy repeated on the last page.Sometimes the allusions are personal jokes, as when he compares Ryde's innkeeper, Mrs. Francis, to a fury and witch from a faraway island where the "few savages who inhabit it have little to do with humanity save their form". The effect of disorientation is heightened by the description of the surrounding countryside, with its lush greenery and exuberant flora, so that the Isle of Wight implicitly becomes Aeaea, Circe's island,[33] and Mrs. Francis a sort of cheap Circe who casts spells on her victims in the absence of delicious poisons, billing them for infamous piquettes at dizzying prices. During his stay on the island, Fielding, he writes, bought venison from Southampton, mysteriously attributing this delicacy to the bounties of Fortuna: he thus identifies himself with Ulysses, engulfed in the delights of Aeaea, by repeating the two lines from the Odyssey that the king, with a stag on his shoulder, utters to his companions as soon as he returns from the hunt.[34]
In the end, this analogical play on fragments of ancient epics takes on a melancholy tone, as the everyday banality of the events narrated in this way ends up clashing with the heroic legends taken as a reference. There seems to be a pathetic imbalance between a dying author and conquering heroes. Fielding had already published A Voyage from this World to the Next in 1743: here he returns to the theme he developed there, but with the imminence of the passage from one to the other; the winds are not blowing towards Ithaca, the native land, and no doubt the promised new Troy will be a last hell on earth.
For Nathalie Bernard, Fielding ultimately undertakes a veritable demystification of the great Greek and Latin texts and, in his final Diary, "translates their marvelous adventures into realistic and rational terms, while reserving the use of epic style for the mediocre events and characters encountered during his journey"; her thesis echoes Mikhail Bakhtin's theory, who writes: "The absolute past of gods, demigods and heroes is actualized in parodies and above all in travesties; it is belittled, represented at the level of actuality, in its usual setting, in the language of its time"[35]
Drawing on Gérard Genette's definition of intertextuality as "a relationship of co-presence between two or more texts",[36] Nathalie Bernard first points out that, in Fielding's diary, while this co-presence extends to numerous English writings, such as John Crowe's comedy, Sir County Nice, or Shakespeare's Macbeth, but also Montesquieu's De l'esprit des lois, it is indeed the marvellous tales of antiquity, the epics of Homer and Virgil, Ovid's Metamorphoses and Horace's Satires that are most often called upon. The primary purpose of these references is to confirm, through their erudition, this passenger's status as a gentleman of letters, in the face of the very ordinary individuals mentioned in his book, such as the commander and his nephew, both uneducated, or Mrs Francis, the stingy and unwelcoming innkeeper, or the zealous and impolite Portuguese customs officers, even creating a relationship of power and authority with the reader who, if erudite, follows the meanderings of the quotations and, if not, is left to his own devices.[37] The imaginary and mythological works of Antiquity are thus reduced to the status of didactic documents, instructive models, ancestors of his Diary in which Fielding engages in an exercise of decoding that turns their extraordinary into an allegory of banal situations, a veritable "literalization" of marvelous literature: the girls in the whorehouses and brothels are like Circe captivating the men; Ryde's vulgar innkeeper intoxicates the crew to the point of turning them into swine; the derisory captain sketches out a vague struggle against the winds, a pale replica of Ulysses braving the waves; and the painful heroism of the passenger participates mutatis mutandis in the epic of everyday life. Moreover, according to the amply echoed introduction, Fielding the magistrate leaves the English capital cleansed of its underworld, similar to the King of Ithaca who leaves a destroyed Troy, and if he is not the master of his skiff nor will he return to his native island, at least, like Aeneas gaining Latium, he is sailing towards a new homeland, not the heir to Rome despite its seven hills, but perhaps a Troy that a horse will not cheat this time, judging by the strictness of the laws welcoming the passengers of this foreign ship from beyond the oceans, and therefore a priori suspect.
This demythologized rereading of ancient epics often resorts to the heroic-comic style to depict ordinary events and mediocre characters. In this way, the triviality of the world is called into question by its juxtaposition with heroic dignity, whose sublime is undermined by its opposition to the inconveniences of life. By invoking ancient intertexts, the Diary conveys the disillusionment and questioning of a man who knows he is doomed, and measures epic heroism against the very real torments of which he is a victim: "If his life turns out to be more trivial than in mythical epics, heroism is no less sublime for being more human". Thus, life and literature cohabit throughout, right up to the final quotation from Horace's Satires, which marks the concomitance between narrative and journey. The journey through the pages comes to an end as the journey across the waters draws to a close: Fielding now measures the gap between his life and an epic tale, at once amused and indignant about it, but also marvelling at it, for his voice, confused with that of the author of the Satires, reveals that, despite everything, he remains confident in the power of the charms of the imagination, triumphing in the end over dark or mediocre reality.
Only five of Fielding's letters to his half-brother John survive, two written aboard the Queen of Portugal and three in Lisbon, amused or ulcerated, to report on the new daily routine.
The comic element remains, as evidenced by the description of the valet William returning to England, carried away by the powerful flow of a Portuguese wine binge, or the expression of his own nostalgia for familiar food, prompting him to ask John to send him a cook by the first boat, or the grotesque flirtation of Richard Veal, the seventy-year-old commander, seducing Mary Fielding's maid Isabella Ash and promising her marriage, or the continual moaning, sighing and weeping of the same Mary, inconsolable at having been exiled from her native land.
Captain Richard Veal is one of the central characters in the Diary. Fielding seems to have been rather fascinated by this man, whom he met before embarking and then met on board for six weeks and in Lisbon before he left for London, and who, in the cabin they shared, told him of his past exploits. In his Diary, he gives frequent glimpses into the life of this yachtsman: forty-six years of sailing, adventures, many victories, a few setbacks. But he protects his anonymity by concealing his identity, even going so far as to give a false name to the ship on which he served during the War of Jenkins' Ear.
This interest can be explained by the extraordinary life of this wizened officer, who commanded a ship that sailed back and forth between Great Britain and Portugal without any hazardous adventures. Probably born in Exeter in January 1686, little is known about his youth. In 1733, he married Margaret Brown, with whom he had legal disputes over property, and who died in July 1734. In May 1735, he remarried in St. Paul's Cathedral to Jane King, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a local merchant, who died in April 1754, shortly before Fielding made her acquaintance. He commanded several ships, beginning his career on the Saudades ("want, desire to see again"). His adventures as a privateer seem to have begun in 1744, when war with Spain was spreading to France, aboard the Hunter, a four-hundred-ton frigate with two hundred men and twenty-four guns. Several enemy ships were thus boarded. In 1745, he was given command of the Inspector, with which he captured several merchant ships between Martinique and Cadiz. In 1748, however, a violent storm caused the Inspector to drift into Tangier Bay, where she lost ninety men; Veal and the officers were rescued by HMS Phoenix, but the crew were captured and became the slaves of the local potentate, sparking a controversy that continued for years in Gentleman's Magazine and other gazettes. The last survivors were not freed until 1750, and on their return one of them published a violent account of their captivity in which Commander Veal and his officers were accused of cowardice.
This fiasco didn't dissuade the officer, who returned to duty on the Dreadnought, where he captured the Bellona, then wreaked havoc on the east coast of Spain, sinking at least four cargo ships and seizing a prestigious French merchant ship, the Assomption de Marseille, laden with wine, cognac, oils, flour, soap and other booty worth 10,000 pounds. Veal had some trouble with the law, as some of his catches were disputed as rightfully belonging to the crown. The Dreadnought seems to have been his last command as a privateer, and from 1740 to 1755, he commanded the Queen of Portugal, on which Fielding had embarked. His rotations between London, Lisbon and Madeira enabled him to be the first to report on the earthquake of November 1, 1755. In March 1756, he took command of a new ship, the Prince of Wales, but died in June of that year. It is not known whether he was ever aware of Fielding's Journal.
Only the arrival in Portugal is briefly mentioned in two paragraphs at the beginning of the last two pages of the entry "Wednesday August 7", with some caustic comments on first impressions of the city, in particular a devastating comparison with Palmyra.
«if a man was suddenly removed from Palmyra thither, and should take a view of no other city, in how glorious a light would the ancient architecture appear to him? And what desolation and destruction of arts and sciences would he conclude had happened between the several areas of these cities.»To find out more, one has to refer to the few letters he wrote to his brother John in the days that followed. Fielding is astonished, for example, at the number of processions in the streets. In fact, as the previous winter had been very dry, the earth seemed to be baked by the sun and the atmosphere remained stifling (Fielding mentions a kill, shell for kiln, lime kiln). By March of the same year, George Whitfield had already noticed the religious processions going from convent to convent "imploring the longed-for Blessing of Rain". He also refers to "Bellisle Castle", the Torre de Belém, Lisbon's citadel, and it was in view of this fortification that he rented a villa in a district he calls the Kensington of England, and where the Court now resides. Finally, among a few other rare details, he refers to an Englishman, a hermit it seems, perhaps from the convent perched atop the Lisbon rock (or from one of the forty-two hermitages in the region of nearby Sintra), commonly known as the "Cork convent", given the humidity of the area, which favors the proliferation of this species.
Fielding's death, on October 8, 1754, was itself a humorous, if macabre, event: eight days later, the Public Advertiser published the good news that the novelist was in perfect health, that the gout had left him and that his appetite had become excellent again. The paper bitterly regretted these lines a month later, but for the rest of the century, pilgrims searched in vain for their idol's grave in Lisbon's English cemetery, and it wasn't until 1830 that a monument was erected on a spot selected by guess, so much so that Dora Quillinan wrote in 1847 that it "perhaps covers the bones of an idiot".
In the preface, he quotes a famous passage attributed to Longinus, who, comparing the Odyssey to the Iliad, evokes a "becalmed ocean" (océan sans vague), a "setting sun" (soleil couchant), the "ebbing tide of Homer's greatness" (génie au reflux), and concludes that "the greatness remains, but without the intensity"}. The reference to Longinus indicates, firstly, that the Diary is not a final novel, but a final work; it is indeed from the Odyssey, not the Iliad, that he has borrowed his comparisons and metaphors, accompanied by the tortuous meanderings of the Queen of Portugal, sometimes slowed by resting winds and ebbing tides, sometimes swept along by the ocean's assaults.
Not far from Lisbon, almost at the end of the voyage, the passengers witness from the deck the most serene evening they can imagine, not a cloud in the sky, the sun sinking in majesty, the horizon still bathed in blaze, and a full moon offering itself unvarnished: "Compared with so much splendor," writes Fielding, "the ornaments of the theater, the pageantry of the courts, scarcely merit the consideration of a child".
This is Henry Fielding's farewell to the world of letters, to affairs of state, to the stage and to honors; from now on, he contemplates the gentle spectacle of the falling night.
His wife, Mary Daniel Fielding, outlived him by almost half a century, dying in 1802 at the age of eighty. After her husband's death, she moved near Canterbury to the home of her son Ralph Allen, named after the famous family friend, where she lived for the rest of her life.
The life of Fielding
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