History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
often be the case), we shall spare no pains nor paper to open it at
large to our reader; but if whole years should pass without producing
anything worthy his notice, we shall not be afraid of a chasm in our
history; but shall hasten on to matters of consequence, and leave such
periods of time totally unobserved.
These are indeed to be considered as blanks in the grand lottery of
time. We therefore, who are the registers of that lottery, shall
imitate those sagacious persons who deal in that which is drawn at
Guildhall, and who never trouble the public with the many blanks they
dispose of; but when a great prize happens to be drawn, the newspapers
are presently filled with it, and the world is sure to be informed at
whose office it was sold: indeed, commonly two or three different
offices lay claim to the honour of having disposed of it; by which, I
suppose, the adventurers are given to understand that certain brokers
are in the secrets of Fortune, and indeed of her cabinet council.
My reader then is not to be surprized, if, in the course of this work,
he shall find some chapters very short, and others altogether as long;
some that contain only the time of a single day, and others that
comprise years; in a word, if my history sometimes seems to stand
still, and sometimes to fly. For all which I shall not look on myself
as accountable to any court of critical jurisdiction whatever: for as
I am, in reality, the founder of a new province of writing, so I am at
liberty to make what laws I please therein. And these laws, my
readers, whom I consider as my subjects, are bound to believe in and
to obey; with which that they may readily and cheerfully comply, I do
hereby assure them that I shall principally regard their ease and
advantage in all such institutions: for I do not, like a _jure divino_
tyrant, imagine that they are my slaves, or my commodity. I am,
indeed, set over them for their own good only, and was created for
their use, and not they for mine. Nor do I doubt, while I make their
interest the great rule of my writings, they will unanimously concur
in supporting my dignity, and in rendering me all the honour I shall
deserve or desire.
Chapter ii.
Religious cautions against showing too much favour to bastards; and a
great discovery made by Mrs Deborah Wilkins.
Eight months after the celebration of the nuptials between Captain
Blifil and Miss Bridget Allworthy, a young lady of great beauty,
merit, and fortune, was Miss Bridget, by reason of a fright, delivered
of a fine boy. The child was indeed to all appearances perfect; but
the midwife discovered it was born a month before its full time.
Though the birth of an heir by his beloved sister was a circumstance
of great joy to Mr Allworthy, yet it did not alienate his affections
from the little foundling, to whom he had been godfather, had given
his own name of Thomas, and whom he had hitherto seldom failed of
visiting, at least once a day, in his nursery.
He told his sister, if she pleased, the new-born infant should be bred
up together with little Tommy; to which she consented, though with
some little reluctance: for she had truly a great complacence for her
brother; and hence she had always behaved towards the foundling with
rather more kindness than ladies of rigid virtue can sometimes bring
themselves to show to these children, who, however innocent, may be
truly called the living monuments of incontinence.
The captain could not so easily bring himself to bear what he
condemned as a fault in Mr Allworthy. He gave him frequent hints, that
to adopt the fruits of sin, was to give countenance to it. He quoted
several texts (for he was well read in Scripture), such as, _He visits
the sins of the fathers upon the children; and the fathers have eaten
sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge_,&c. Whence he
argued the legality of punishing the crime of the parent on the
bastard. He said, “Though the law did not positively allow the
destroying such base-born children, yet it held them to be the
children of nobody; that the Church considered them as the children of
nobody; and that at the best, they ought to be brought up to the
lowest and vilest offices of the commonwealth.”
Mr Allworthy answered to all this, and much more, which the captain
had urged on this subject, “That, however guilty the parents might be,
the children were certainly innocent: that as to the texts he had
quoted, the former of them was a particular denunciation against the
Jews, for the sin of idolatry, of relinquishing and hating their
heavenly King; and the latter was parabolically spoken, and rather
intended to denote the certain and necessary consequences of sin, than
any express judgment against it. But to represent the Almighty as
avenging the sins of the guilty on the innocent, was indecent, if not
blasphemous, as it was to represent him acting against the first
principles of natural justice, and against the original notions of
right and wrong, which he himself had implanted in our minds; by which
we were to judge not only in all matters which were not revealed, but
even of the truth of revelation itself. He said he knew many held the
same principles with the captain on this head; but he was himself
firmly convinced to the contrary, and would provide in the same manner
for this poor infant, as if a legitimate child had had fortune to have
been found in the same place.”
While the captain was taking all opportunities to press these and such
like arguments, to remove the little foundling from Mr Allworthy's, of
whose fondness for him he began to be jealous, Mrs Deborah had made a
discovery, which, in its event, threatened at least to prove more
fatal to poor Tommy than all the reasonings of the captain.
Whether the insatiable curiosity of this good woman had carried her on
to that business, or whether she did it to confirm herself in the good
graces of Mrs Blifil, who, notwithstanding her outward behaviour to
the foundling, frequently abused the infant in private, and her
brother too, for his fondness to it, I will not determine; but she had
now, as she conceived, fully detected the father of the foundling.
Now, as this was a discovery of great consequence, it may be necessary
to trace it from the fountain-head. We shall therefore very minutely
lay open those previous matters by which it was produced; and for that
purpose we shall be obliged to reveal all the secrets of a little
family with which my reader is at present entirely unacquainted; and
of which the oeconomy was so rare and extraordinary, that I fear it
will shock the utmost credulity of many married persons.
Chapter iii.
The description of a domestic government founded upon rules directly
contrary to those of Aristotle.
My reader may please to remember he hath been informed that Jenny
Jones had lived some years with a certain schoolmaster, who had, at
her earnest desire, instructed her in Latin, in which, to do justice
to her genius, she had so improved herself, that she was become a
better scholar than her master.
Indeed, though this poor man had undertaken a profession to which
learning must be allowed necessary, this was the least of his
commendations. He was one of the best-natured fellows in the world,
and was, at the same time, master of so much pleasantry and humour,
that he was reputed the wit of the country; and all the neighbouring
gentlemen were so desirous of his company, that as denying was not his
talent, he spent much time at their houses, which he might, with more
emolument, have spent in his school.
It may be imagined that a gentleman so qualified and so disposed, was
in no danger of becoming formidable to the learned seminaries of Eton
or Westminster. To speak plainly, his scholars were divided into two
classes: in the upper of which was a young gentleman, the son of a
neighbouring squire, who, at the age of seventeen, was just entered
into his Syntaxis; and in the lower was a second son of the same
gentleman, who, together with seven parish-boys, was learning to read
and write.
The stipend arising hence would hardly have indulged the schoolmaster
in the luxuries of life, had he not added to this office those of
clerk and barber, and had not Mr Allworthy added to the whole an
annuity of ten pounds, which the poor man received every Christmas,
and with which he was enabled to cheer his heart during that sacred
festival.
Among his other treasures, the pedagogue had a wife, whom he had
married out of Mr Allworthy's kitchen for her fortune, viz., twenty
pounds, which she had there amassed.
This woman was not very amiable in her person. Whether she sat to my
friend Hogarth, or no, I will not determine; but she exactly resembled
the young woman who is pouring out her mistress's tea in the third
picture of the Harlot's Progress. She was, besides, a profest follower
of that noble sect founded by Xantippe of old; by means of which she
became more formidable in the school than her husband; for, to confess
the truth, he was never master there, or anywhere else, in her
presence.
Though her countenance did not denote much natural sweetness of
temper, yet this was, perhaps, somewhat soured by a circumstance which
generally poisons matrimonial felicity; for children are rightly
called the pledges of love; and her husband, though they had been
married nine years, had given her no such pledges; a default for which
he had no excuse, either from age or health, being not yet thirty
years old, and what they call a jolly brisk young man.
Hence arose another evil, which produced no little uneasiness to the
poor pedagogue, of whom she maintained so constant a jealousy, that he
durst hardly speak to one woman in the parish; for the least degree of
civility, or even correspondence, with any female, was sure to bring
his wife upon her back, and his own.
In order to guard herself against matrimonial injuries in her own
house, as she kept one maid-servant, she always took care to chuse her
out of that order of females whose faces are taken as a kind of
security for their virtue; of which number Jenny Jones, as the reader
hath been before informed, was one.
As the face of this young woman might be called pretty good security
of the before-mentioned kind, and as her behaviour had been always
extremely modest, which is the certain consequence of understanding in
women; she had passed above four years at Mr Partridge's (for that was
the schoolmaster's name) without creating the least suspicion in her
mistress. Nay, she had been treated with uncommon kindness, and her
mistress had permitted Mr Partridge to give her those instructions
which have been before commemorated.
But it is with jealousy as with the gout: when such distempers are in
the blood, there is never any security against their breaking out; and
that often on the slightest occasions, and when least suspected.
Thus it happened to Mrs Partridge, who had submitted four years to her
husband's teaching this young woman, and had suffered her often to
neglect her work, in order to pursue her learning. For, passing by one
day, as the girl was reading, and her master leaning over her, the
girl, I know not for what reason, suddenly started up from her chair:
and this was the first time that suspicion ever entered into the head
of her mistress. This did not, however, at that time discover itself,
but lay lurking in her mind, like a concealed enemy, who waits for a
reinforcement of additional strength before he openly declares himself
and proceeds upon hostile operations: and such additional strength
soon arrived to corroborate her suspicion; for not long after, the
husband and wife being at dinner, the master said to his maid, _Da
mihi aliquid potum:_ upon which the poor girl smiled, perhaps at the