A fine vintage
The surprisingly difficult task of
selecting ‘No 4’ from the rich field of writers in the English-language has
convinced me that the best must be judged – not by their wit and ability to
produce laughs- but by their talents as great writers, with unrivalled skills
in capturing in print the elusive and intangible qualities of humour. They must be writers whose words and
imagery, once experienced, will stay with us most of our lives.
Even then, justifying any selection
of only 10 remains almost impossible. However, by excluding those humorists
judged to be ‘satirists’ provides some relief. Number Four in the field then becomes self-evident. . . if you
overlook the fact that his work contains much delicious satire.
And if you will accept the fact there are exceptions to all rules - and parameters - because only the work, not the life, of my fourth choice survived in the 20th century.
In the 1700s Henry Fielding kept a diary,
posthumously published (also in the 1700s) as Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, described by a
general editor of his work, Malcolm Elwin, as “one of the most delightfully
readable short books in the literature of travel”. And this opinion was
delivered more than 200 years after Fielding’s death!
Fielding - born in 1707,the son of a
canon in Salisbury and grandson of an Earl - has been credited for being
‘father of the English-language novel”. There are other claimants, but what is
not in doubt is that he was, and still is, among the best writers of humour,
ever. His skill, his satire, irony and comic plots combine to make this so.
As Thackeray deduced in another
century, Fielding was “himself the hero of his books: he is wild Tom Jones.”
Debonair in manner, brilliant in wit, physically strong and handsome, he
enjoyed the same success with women as did his characters. He knew what he was writing about.
William Hogarth, his only
contemporary peer as a social satirist, was his intimate for twenty years. But
Fielding made few friends among the literati, and he was maligned in his
private character by the spite of Smollett and Horace Walpole and in his
literary reputation by the prejudice of Samuel Johnson. Fielding has surpassed
them all.
Few novelists compete with him in
craftsmanship, according to Malcolm Elwin, who was the general editor of a
series of Classical literature published in the 1950s. This is quickly
appreciated as you keep turning the pages of Tom Jones, a lengthy book
first published in 1749, and made into a lengthy, but unforgettable movie about
230 years later.
The film is meticulous in its portrayal of
Fielding’s plot, for the plot itself is brilliant in that its neat strategy is
revealed and played out only in the last 50 pages of an 800-page book.
In the early
1800’s, Samuel Coleridge exclaimed: "What a master of composition Fielding
was! Upon my word I think the Oedipus Tyrannus, The Alchemist, and Tom
Jones, the three most perfect plots ever planned."
William Makepeace Thackeray wrote in
The English Humourists:
"As a picture of manners, the
novel of Tom Jones is indeed exquisite: as a work of construction quite
a wonder: the byplay of wisdom; the power of observation; the multiplied
felicitous turns and thoughts; the vaned character of the great Comic Epic;
keep the reader in a perpetual admiration and curiosity. But against Mr. Thomas
Jones himself we have a right to put in a protest. . . I can't say that I think
Mr. Jones a virtuous character."
Thackeray was a Victorian, and
duty-bound to express horror at the sexual antics of Fielding’s hero.
"Since the author
of Tom Jones was buried, no writer of fiction among us,” wrote
Thackeray, “has been permitted to depict to his utmost power a man. We must drape him, and give him a certain
conventional simper. Society will not tolerate the Natural in our Art." .
Fielding was in fact "the
founder of a new province of writing", as he the author himself explains
in his running commentary to his readers as the plots unfold. . His
explanations can be seen as a precursor of such works as Stevenson's essays on
the art of writing and Somerset Maugham's story of his literary development in The
Summing Up, according to Elwin*.
"He
is a great inventor, an unrivalled craftsman, a perfect master of his
material," wrote W. E. Henley; "his novels teem
with ripe wisdom and generous conclusions and beneficent examples."
Byron fairly called Henry Fielding
‘the prose Homer of human nature,’ and Tom Jones is his Odyssey, concluded
the general editor of Macdonald Illustrated Classics in mid-20th
century.
The sources for a study of
Fielding's life and work are contained in the two massive volumes of Henry
Fielding, His Life, Works, and Times, by Dr. F. Homes Dudden, 1952.
Editions of
all Fielding's works were edited by George Saintsbury in 1893 and published in
London in 12 volumes. In 1903
Fielding’s works were edited by W. E. Henley and published in New York, in 16 volumes.
Brief
excerpts from Tom Jones appear next so that you may be reminded of his
robust humour, and be tempted to read, or re-read, his work, and to make your
own judgements. |
