speaking of the _Wedding Day_, he lost his first wife. That she was
alive in the winter of 1742-3 is clear, for, in the Preface to the
_Miscellanies_, he describes himself as being then laid up, "with a
favourite Child dying in one Bed, and my Wife in a Condition very little
better, on another, attended with other Circumstances, which served as
very proper Decorations to such a Scene,"--by which Mr. Keightley no
doubt rightly supposes him to refer to writs and bailiffs. It must also
be assumed that Mrs. Fielding was alive when the Preface was written,
since, in apologising for an apparent delay in publishing the book, he
says the "real Reason" was "the dangerous Illness of one from whom I
_draw_ [the italics are ours] all the solid Comfort of my Life." There
is another unmistakable reference to her in one of the minor papers in
the first volume, viz. that _Of the Remedy of Affliction for the Loss of
our Friends_. "I remember the most excellent of Women, and tenderest of
Mothers, when, after a painful and dangerous Delivery, she was told she
had a Daughter, answering; _Good God! have I produced a Creature who is
to undergo what I have suffered!_ Some Years afterwards, I heard the
same Woman, on the Death of that very Child, then one of the loveliest
Creatures ever seen, comforting herself with reflecting, that _her Child
could never know what it was to feel such a Loss as she then lamented_."
Were it not for the passages already quoted from the Preface, it might
almost be concluded from the tone of the foregoing quotation and the
final words of the paper, which refer to our meeting with those we have
lost in Heaven, that Mrs. Fielding was already dead. But the use of the
word "draw" in the Preface affords distinct evidence to the contrary. It
is therefore most probable that she died in the latter part of 1743,
having been long in a declining state of health. For a time her husband
was inconsolable. "The fortitude of mind," says Murphy, "with which he
met all the other calamities of life, deserted him on this most trying
occasion." His grief was so vehement "that his friends began to think