Another recently established fact is also more or less connected with
"Mur.--" as Johnson called him. In his "Essay" of 1762, he gave a
highly-coloured account of Fielding's first marriage, and of the
promptitude with which, assisted by yellow liveries and a pack of
hounds, he managed to make duck and drake of his wife's little fortune.
This account has now been "simply riddled in its details" (as Mr.
Saintsbury puts it) by successive biographers, the last destructive
critic being the late Sir Leslie Stephen, who plausibly suggested that
the "yellow liveries" (not the family liveries, be it noted!) were
simply a confused recollection of the fantastic pranks of that other and
earlier Beau Fielding (Steele's "Orlando the Fair"), who married the
Duchess of Cleveland in 1705, and was also a Justice of the Peace for
Westminster. One thing was wanting to the readjustment of the narrative,
and that was the precise date of Fielding's marriage to the beautiful
Miss Cradock of Salisbury, the original both of Sophia Western and
Amelia Booth. By good fortune this has now been ascertained. Lawrence
gave the date as 1735; and Keightley suggested the spring of that year.
This, as Swift would say, was near the mark, although confirmation has
been slow in coming. In June 1906, Mr. Thomas S. Bush, of Bath,
announced in _The Bath Chronicle_ that the desired information was to be
found (not in the Salisbury registers which had been fruitlessly
consulted, but) at the tiny church of St. Mary, Charlcombe, a secluded
parish about one and a half miles north of Bath. Here is the
record:--"November y'e 28, 1734. Henry Fielding of y'e Parish of St.
James in Bath, Esq., and Charlotte Cradock, of y'e same Parish,
spinster, were married by virtue of a licence from y'e Court of Wells."
All lovers of Fielding owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Bush, whose
researches, in addition, disclosed the fact that Sarah Fielding, the
novelist's third sister (as we shall see presently), was buried, not in