Keightley very justly observes that Mrs. Fielding must for some time
have had a maid, since it was a maid who had been devotedly attached to
her whom Fielding subsequently married. He also argues that "living in a
garret and skulking in out o' the way retreats," are incompatible with
studying law and practising as a barrister. Making every allowance,
however, for the somewhat exaggerated way in which those of high rank
often speak of the distresses of their less opulent kinsfolk, it is
probable that Fielding's married life was one of continual shifts and
privations. Such a state of things is completely in accordance with his
profuse nature [Footnote: The passage as to his imprudence is, oddly
enough, omitted from Mr. Keightley's quotation.] and his precarious
means. Of his family by the first Mrs. Fielding no very material
particulars have been preserved. Writing, in November 1745, in the _True
Patriot_, he speaks of having a son and a daughter, but no son by his
first wife seems to have survived him. The late Colonel Chester found
the burial of a "James Fielding, son of Henry Fielding," recorded under
date of 19th February 1736, in the register of St. Giles in the Fields;
but it is by no means certain that this entry refers to the novelist. A
daughter, Harriet or Harriot, certainly did survive him, for she is
mentioned in the _Voyage to Lisbon_ as being of the party who
accompanied him. Another daughter, as already stated, probably died in
the winter of 1742-3; and the _Journey from this World to the Next_
contains the touching reference to this or another child, of which
Dickens writes so warmly in one of his letters. "I presently," says
Fielding, speaking of his entrance into Elysium, "met a little Daughter,
whom I had lost several Years before. Good Gods! what Words can describe
the Raptures, the melting passionate Tenderness, with which we kiss'd
each other, continuing in our Embrace, with the most extatic Joy, a
Space, which if Time had been measured here as on Earth, could not have
been less than half a Year."