Five editions of Joseph Andrews, Henry Fielding's first
novel, were published by Andrew Millar during the novelist's lifetime.
Although it could not match the extraordinary popularity of its rival,
Pamela, the book was nonetheless an immediate success: the
first three editions, together amounting to 6500 sets, were published in little
more than a year, a supply sufficient to meet the demands of the public for
five years before a fourth of 2000 copies, and, later, a fifth, again of 2000
copies, were required.[1] As nearly
as can be determined, the dates of publication of these editions are as
follows: (1) 22 February 1742; (2) 10 June 1742; (3) 21-28 March 1743;
(4) 29 October 1748 [the title-page reads 1749]; and (5) 19 December
1751.[2]
For the editor, or for any serious reader interested in establishing the
definitive version of Joseph Andrews, the evolution of the
text
has special significance. An exacting critic and a responsible craftsman,
Fielding was seldom satisfied with his own performance: he returned to his
work with the artist's proud eye to polish and perfect. Each of the second
and subsequent editions was revised and corrected. The title-page of the
second edition only, however, which was enlarged and extensively
reworked, bears the further legend, "with Alterations and
Additions by the Author"; with the others, there is no such
explicit assurance that Fielding authorized the changes that occur. The
problem is complicated by the fact that even the sixth edition, appearing in
the year of Arthur Murphy's edition of the Works (1762),
was
also announced as "Revised and Corrected," though it was published eight
years after the novelist's death; and the same tag appears on the
titlepages of the seventh and eighth editions.
Which of these corrected texts is, then, authoritative? Previous editors
who have bothered to ask this question have chosen the second edition as
copy-text (though in practice they do not follow it very scrupulously),
admitting later readings occasionally and with bewildering inconsistency.
Aurélien Digeon's early essay on the text of Joseph
Andrews, based on very careless collation, has been less than
helpful:
Digeon summarily disposed of the third and fourth editions, asserting that
he had found only two slight corrections in each[3] —a hopelessly inaccurate
count that
might well discourage any editor from troubling himself with them. But,
though there is little in them to compare with the major revisions of the
second edition, these texts abound with minor alterations of phrasing and
punctuation, some of which are
quite significant. On the other hand, changes in the fifth edition are
noticeably less frequent, and they are consistently, and suspiciously, less
striking. My own count of separate instances of substantive changes in these
editions — excluding alterations of punctuation and paragraphing,
and all
obvious printer's errors — is as follows: in
B, 311; in
C, 163; in
D, 112; in
E, 47.
Because
of qualitative differences — individual interpolations in the second
edition
amounting at times to passages from one to several pages in length
— the
discrepancy between
B and the other editions is even more
marked than these numbers would suggest. In order to facilitate analysis
and to furnish a convenient record of the more significant revisions, a full
sampling of the textual variants is appended to this essay. A glance at these
will illustrate the differences more vividly than any abstract description;
and, what is more, it should reveal that Fielding's
own hand was at work in much, though certainly not in all, of the "revising
and correcting" of the third and fourth, as well as of the second,
editions.
Important corroborative evidence to this effect is found in certain of
the advertisements for these editions. Notices for the fourth edition which
Millar ran in The General Advertiser include this helpful
statement, prominently displayed: "The Fourth Edition.
Revis'd and Corrected by the Author."[4] Just why that last crucial phrase
should
have been omitted from the title-page and from the advertisement carried
in The Jacobite's Journal is puzzling, since it would doubtless
have promoted the sale of the edition. Perhaps Fielding felt that the changes
were inconsiderable (which, in comparison with those he made for the
second edition, they certainly are), and did not therefore wish to mislead
the public. In any case, the ascription of the revisions to him contained in
The General Advertiser is quite explicit and deliberate.
Clearly,
Millar wished to have it known that the changes in the fourth edition had
Fielding's
authority; and his declaration is supported by the nature of several of the
revisions, which, though brief, are too striking to be dismissed as the work
of some careless compositor (see, for example, Textual Notes 2, 16, 21,
73, 86, 101, 104, 105, 111, 120, 123, 126, 127).[5] Similarly, although the original
advertisements are silent regarding the authorship of the revisions in the
third edition, notices carried more than two years later in Fielding's own
True Patriot bear this significant description: "The Third
Edition: Revised
and Corrected with Alterations and Additions by the Author."
[6] Even without this confirmation,
substantive alterations in the edition would seem admissible, since many of
them reveal an author's care (see, for instance, TN 10, 46, 66, 76, 83, 87,
88, 93, 96, 102, 103, 110, 117, 122, 128), and since they are incorporated
into the authoritative fourth edition. With perhaps two curious exceptions
(see TN 14, 100),
[7] emendations in
the fifth edition are very likely not to be trusted: they are too slight and
insignificant, and suggest the work of a compositor, or some printing-house
editor.
In the case of a writer as conscious of his craft as Fielding, textual
analysis has a special value: it affords one of the surest avenues to that final
objective of criticism, the close and intimate knowledge of the work of art,
its method and its meaning. Although, under the pressures of earning a
living as lawyer and hackney author, Fielding seems to have composed
hurriedly — a supposition that accounts for the several minor
inconsistencies of detail that still survive in his novels — he
nevertheless
thought long and seriously about the art of fiction. Joseph Andrews,
Tom Jones, Amelia, were carefully planned and constructed from
the
start, and no less carefully polished in revision. Notwithstanding their
humbler mode and subjects, they were, after all, of the epic genre, and he
gave them the attention due to the highest of the literary kinds. Though it
is ultimately the shape and spirit of the finished work that matter, an
examination of the novel in process can
tell us much about Fielding's craftsmanship and his purpose. Analyzing the
text at the point of revision, we come as close as possible to the writer
at the moment of composition — smoothing or sharpening his style,
breathing the breath of life into scene and character, whetting the edge of
his satire.
Of the more than six hundred substantive variants that occur through
the fifth edition, a majority are of little interest to any but the most curious
bibliographer. Many — and this is especially true of the fifth edition
—
may be confidently attributed to the compositor, and many more result from
the effort to correct grammar and smooth syntax, the usual business of
proof-reading. Of the extensive changes introduced into the second edition,
and of the later, less substantial revisions, however, many are of a more
general interest for the light they shed on Fielding's art and on his thematic
intentions. There were the inevitable slips of the pen to set right, and a few
colorless sentences to retouch in the interests of style. What is more
important, missing from the novel as it first appeared were a number of its
most humorous and skillful passages. Whole facets of the memorable figure
of Parson Adams, Fielding's greatest achievement in characterization, and
of Mrs.
Tow-wouse, as well as lively strokes in the depiction of almost every other
major character — and, indeed, at least one amusing portrait in its
entirety — were lacking; long, dramatic passages at the beginning
and
end of the central narrative were as yet unwritten, leaving those crucial
structural positions unrealized; and ridicule of the clergy, lawyers, and
politicians was underdeveloped. At times as slight as a word or phrase, or
as full as a page or more, these meaningful "Alterations and
Additions" require separate classification and
commentary.[8]
Despite his revisions, Fielding caught only a handful of the errors
which attended the rapid composition of Joseph Andrews.
The
"Erratum" prefixed to the first edition, for example, called attention to the
"Mistake" made in Book III, Chapter 6, where Adams is said to have
missed two nights' sleep, an error corrected in the second edition (TN 1,
95). Although one instance remains of the failure to remember that the
Christian name of Lady Booby's husband was Thomas and not John (I, 11),
Fielding duly rectified two others in revision (TN 11, 37). Similarly, in the
second edition Fanny calls her rescuer and fellowservant by his proper
name, this time John and not Thomas (TN 108). An alteration in the fourth
edition corrects the misnaming of Le Sage's Dr. Sangrado, until then called
Sanglardo (TN 73). Readers
still uncertain about the number of volumes of Parson Adams' sermons will
be relieved to learn that while the inconsistency remains (I, 15), a change
in the fourth edition reveals Fielding's intention (TN 21). Another "error"
was allowed to stand despite the carping of some very dull critics, Fielding
adding a long and humorous footnote defending himself from a certain
"Orator" and a faction who publicly misunderstood an amusing passage in
which Adams praises Mr. Wilson for his learning (TN 81). These
emendations, however, were not enough to eliminate all the errors and
inconsistencies of that first hasty writing.
[9]
A number of minor, miscellaneous alterations may be considered
together. Several name changes are curious: thus it appears that Leonora's
friend was originally Howella rather than Florella (TN 41); that Justice
Frolick first was Trolick (TN 117); and that before he was kidnapped from
his rightful parents, Joseph Andrews' name was Jacky Wilson (TN 91).
Other variations between the first and second edition assist the annotator.
The addition of a footnote, for instance, enables us to infer that Leonora's
letter to Horatio was the work not of Fielding, but (in all likelihood) of his
sister Sarah, soon to publish an epistolary volume of her own (TN 40); and
by the inclusion of an adjective, Fielding places his reader on surer ground
in identifying another allusion as "long" Sir Thomas Robinson (TN
98).[10] Examination of the texts,
however, seems to invalidate a previously accepted identification, assumed
by both de Castro and
Dudden:[11] It is unlikely that, in
adding in May 1742 a long and important passage to the second edition (TN
57), Fielding would have intended his ignorant parson's recollection of "'a
Nobleman who would give a great deal of Money'" for Adams'
Æschylus as a reference to the antiquarian Edward Harley, second Earl
of Oxford, whose death on 16 June 1741 would make such an allusion out
of date by nearly a year. While too vague to justify a specific inference,
other changes leave us with the suspicion that Fielding intended a particular
reference: for example, the interpolation in the account of the unprincipled
constable, Tom Suckbribe (TN 17). Incidental revisions calculated to inject
a measure of humor and life into a passage are also frequent: typical are
alterations as slight as that in the heated altercation between Betty and the
truculent Mrs. Tow-wouse
(TN 23), or as substantial as the inserted argument for divisions in authors
(TN 27). A change may clarify motive, explaining the innkeeper's disdain
of Adams (TN 49) or Fanny's willingness to accept the favor of Mrs.
Wilson's bed (TN 80); or it may briefly sharpen and emphasize a statement
essential to an important theme, for instance, the rare and exalted nature of
true love (TN 39). Revisions such as these will suggest the kinds of
information to be derived from even the most casual of the
alterations.
As one might expect, much of the incidental retouching was for the
sake of style — for correctness, clarity, color of expression. As
Hercules
Vinegar, editor of The Champion, Fielding had hauled Colley
Cibber before the bench of the Court of Censorial Inquiry on the charge of
murdering the English language; and during the course of his satirical
panegyric on the passion of Love in Joseph Andrews (I, 7),
he
had resumed the attack: not "the Great Cibber, who
confounds
all Number, Gender, and breaks through every Rule of Grammar at his
Will, hath so distorted the English Language, as thou dost
metamorphose and distort the human Senses." In revising his own work, he
took pains not to be guilty of the same offence: we find him smoothing
rough edges (TN 10, 59, 89, 102, 126, 127); clarifying vague expressions
(TN 12, 19, 29, 42, 54, 90, 101, 124); improving transitions (TN 3, 16,
69, 70), or the precision of his words (TN 46, 76, 85, 87, 88, 94, 110,
120, 123, 128), or the logical order and emphasis of his constructions (TN
66, 93, 105, 119); avoiding clumsy repetitions (TN 18, 83); deleting
unnecessary words (TN 96, 103, 111). It will appear that incidental
emendations such as these are especially characteristic of the great majority
of the revisions made for the third and fourth editions. Somewhat more
interesting, improvements in paragraphing or clarity, say, at times provide
further opportunities for the display of some of Fielding's favorite stylistic
devices — the rhetorical question, or exclamation, or parenthesis
—
used for emphasis and to heighten the comedy (TN 74, 30, 26).[12] A change as slight as that in the
account
of the "Ladder of Dependence," gaining balance and antithesis of phrase as
a means of stressing the relative nature of "greatness," illustrates Fielding's
skill in the functional adjustment of sound to sense (TN 61). One of the
surest signs of the master stylist, he
chooses precisely the right verb to evoke a vivid image of Parson
Trulliber's gait (TN 63), or to enliven the scene of Adams' "roasting," this
time with a word more appropriate to the usual business of the pranksters
(TN 99).
Another stroke completes the almost symbolic association between the dogs
that harass the parson and the human curs who accompany them (TN
97).
But Fielding's good judgment in detecting and correcting weaknesses
in his story is superbly manifest in the extensive recasting of the important
transitional episodes (II, 2, and III, 12) that open and close his central
narrative, relating the journey of his heroes from the Dragon Inn towards
the parson's country parish. It was Fielding's keen sense of drama and
proportion that dictated the interpolation of two new scenes to replace the
perfunctory expository passages of the original version. In the first edition
a few lines explained Adams' decision to return to his cure with Joseph: the
sermons he hoped to publish in the Great City had been left behind (TN
31). For the second edition, Fielding took advantage of the comic
potentialities of the situation by depicting at length Joseph's discovery that
the manuscripts were missing and Adams' subsequent bewilderment and
resolution (complete with scholarly quotation and Christian moralization)
to abandon his journey to London. And
we are shown as well an early instance of the friendship, founded on
affection and respect, between parson and parishioner: Joseph offering to
undertake the long journey home to fetch the sermons, and Adams as
thoughtfully refusing to inconvenience his friend. The parson's motivation
remains the same, but Fielding has enriched both the humor and the
humanity of his story, dramatically heralding the adventures of his heroes
on the road.
Balancing this episode, the substantial four-page addition in III, 12,
is even more striking (TN 113). With the central movement of his odyssey
nearing a close, Fielding wisely set about the task of rewriting, both to
achieve a certain symmetry in the architecture of the novel and to effect a
gradual and dramatic, rather than abrupt, lowering of the curtain. With
respect to the progress and structure of the narrative, in Book III, Chapter
12, the stage is being prepared for the successful termination of the quest,
the joyful entrance of the principals into Adams' parish and the marriage
of Joseph and Fanny to follow. The journey is virtually over. The forces
opposing the arrival of the three pilgrims at their destination have been
thwarted by the rescue of Fanny from her abductors and her reunion with
Joseph and the parson; and with the appearance of Peter Pounce, Lady
Booby's steward and representative, who heralds her own imminent arrival
on the scene, the paths of the
antithetical elements of the story — the lady and her worldly
company
and the trio of virtuous wayfarers — have crossed. Having here
brought
his antagonists face to face, in Book IV Fielding will happily resolve the
symbolic conflict between them. The end of this
chapter thus occupies a pivotal position in the organization of the plot; for
the last chapter of Book III, the dialogue between Adams and Pounce
(opposing types of good nature and greed) has as its chief purpose the final
articulation of the major theme, the doctrine of charity, and only
secondarily contributes to the linear progress of the story. As Fielding
originally wrote it, the close of Chapter 12 was far too weak to satisfy the
requirements of structure: his central narrative had to be concluded on a
pitch in keeping with its importance, and preparations had to be made for
the arrival of the company at Lady Booby's country seat. The first skeletal
draft contained the essentials: the placing of the characters for the final
stage of the journey — Pounce and Adams in the chariot and Joseph
and
Fanny on the parson's horse — is swiftly accomplished and,
incidentally,
becomes the occasion for a further instance of Adams' forgetfulness and
Fanny's devotion. The revised
version breathes the vitality of dramatic immediacy, of comic action and
dialogue, into these dry bones, and its greater length functions, again
dramatically, to heighten suspense by avoiding a too rapid transition,
skillfully delaying the shift to Booby-Hall and the denouement. The
uproarious confusion of the preparations for the trip is not simply
reported as before, but
represented as on a
stage,
visually and aurally. Occasioned by the good nature of Joseph and Adams,
the impasse (newly added to the story) as to who will ride the parson's
horse is interspersed with Adams' sesquipedalian speech and underscored
by Fielding's amusing digression, contrasting the sham courtesy of polite
society. Reasons for the resolution of the difficulty are given: Pounce's
pride and the parson's natural complaisance. Added, too, is the comic
incident of the further delay caused by Adams' half-starved horse balking
under the double burden of Joseph and Fanny. Fielding's skillful
craftsmanship, the sense of drama and construction learned through a
decade of play-writing, could scarcely be better demonstrated than by a
comparison of the original and revised versions of this episode.
The effort to impart a fuller measure of life and humor to his
characters further accounts for a number of changes. For the minor figures,
an occasional stroke of the brush is usually sufficient. In the second edition,
for example, Betty the chambermaid, offended and upset by Mrs.
Tow-wouse's insults, stutters in self-defense (TN 24), a comic device
previously used by Fielding in Shamela. In two other
instances,
Leonora betrays her vanity, the principal theme of her story (TN 43, 47),
and the francophile Bellarmine reveals that he is a member of the turncoat
Opposition (TN 44). Brief touches are added to the memorable portrait of
Parson Trulliber: he "stalks" like a goose
(TN 63); he drinks ale rather than cider (TN 64); his "extremely broad"
accent, especially his difficulty with the word
call, is spelled
out
(TN 65); and his hypocrisy in professing, but not practicing, the Christian
virtues of piety and charity is made explicit (TN 67, 68). The ale-house
keeper, formerly a seafaring man, adds a salty phrase of affection for his
lost ship (TN 71). As for Pamela, the change of a word in the third edition
— she speaks of herself as the "Lady" rather than the "Wife" of
Squire
Booby — further exposes her vanity (TN 122). Already remarked in
the
discussion of the major revision in III, 12, Peter Pounce's appetite for a
pretty girl and his pride are now the reasons for his desiring first Fanny and
then Adams to share his coach (TN 113); elsewhere in the same chapter,
a word is enough to point up the pleasant mask he wears (TN 110), or that
notoriety which he shared with his original, the miser Peter Walter of
Stalbridge Park (TN 109). The
second edition makes Mr. Wilson's appreciation of Adams' learning more
apparent (TN 79), doubtless for the benefit of those obtuse critics who had
earlier missed the fun as the parson, flattered by Wilson's compliments,
praises him for his wide reading and good judgment (TN 81); and the
fourth renders less severe Wilson's relief at the death of a jealous mistress
(TN 86). A further touch in Wilson's biography aptly provides the elderly
man of honor with a great hat and a long sword (TN 82); another makes the
coquetry of Sapphira more sophisticated (TN 84). The popular rage for the
Grand Tour, elsewhere satirized in Bellarmine and the "roasting" squire,
is also ridiculed as Fielding retouched the portrait of the Italianate traveler,
emphasizing his sham dignity (TN 52) and filling his speech with
ill-digested scraps of his favorite language (TN 51, 53). Of the minor roles,
only the formidable figure of Mrs. Tow-wouse was much altered in
revision, but here the changes were
substantial. Besides the usual slight strokes — the character of her
chin
(TN 14), her profanity (TN 23), or the "Serenity" of her temper (TN 25)
— Fielding added whole passages in which her termagancy,
hypocrisy,
avarice, and ill-nature are heightened (TN 15, 33, 34, 35). One method he
used was to transfer to Mrs. Tow-wouse several uncharitable remarks
spoken by her husband in the first edition, thereby reinforcing the reader's
sense of her inhumanity and her domination over her well-meaning but
spiritless spouse, in whose mouth the words had been out of
character.
Similarly, the principal roles were filled out and brightened in
revision. For example, the preposterous pedantry and malapropisms of Mrs.
Slipslop were accented (TN 6, 62, 114, 121). With typical reluctance to
own her affection for Joseph, Fanny now coyly misunderstands
her abductor's gibes about her fondness for a footman; in the original
version she had frankly confessed her love (TN 107). Although primarily
intended as a criticism of predatory politicians, another lengthy interpolation
depicts her fears as she stands in the darkness of the Downs alone with
Adams, as yet unknown to her (TN 55; see also TN 56). Several revisions
— the most important of which we have already noticed (TN 31,
113)
— affect the characterization of Joseph: his morals, for instance, are
sounder than those of the authors of "good Books" (TN 4); in apparent
ridicule of
Pamela, he resists his temptress "out of
Tenderness
for his Virtue" (TN 8); and later his bravery and selfless devotion to Fanny
are briefly underscored (TN 77). With a further alteration, calling him
Joseph rather than
Joey (TN 9), Fielding keeps
his
promise to sustain the important thematic analogy between the situation of
his hero — "whom for a good Reason we shall hereafter
call Joseph" (I, 5) — and that of his biblical namesake, who also
withstood the blandishments of an ardent mistress. Slight changes emphasize
Lady Booby's affected indignation at some innocent liberties Joseph had
taken with the servant girls (TN 7) and her more honest rage at his
"Tenderness for his Virtue" (TN 8). Two more substantial revisions point
up her imperiousness and vanity, piqued by Adams' declaration that Fanny
was the "handsomest Woman" in the parish (TN 115, 116): the first
interpolation provides a further instance of the lady's exasperated repetition
of the word "Beauties," which runs through her speech as a kind of comic
leitmotif; the latter, by adding the element of her displeasure with Lawyer
Scout, whose legal gibberish is beyond her, prepares us as well for the fine
comedy of her quick reversal in attitude once Scout has flattered her vanity
by aspersing the character and beauty of her rival.
Inevitably, the largest proportion of the revisions went toward the
perfection of Parson Adams. Some of the most memorable features of this
unforgettable portrait were blurred or missing when it first appeared. In two
major interpolations already discussed (TN 31, 113), Fielding dramatized
Adams' absentmindedness, his piety and good nature, his bookish speech
and his preference for "'the Pedestrian even to the
Vehicular Expedition.'" Many other alterations are minor
—
quick, vivid strokes of the brush: in the Wilson episode, the parson reveals
himself as a connoisseur of good beers (TN 92); details such as the
shortness of his great coat (TN 36) and the length of his beard (TN 112) or
of his legs, so necessary to his horsemanship (TN 48), are brought out, as
well as his poverty, obliging him to borrow a horse from his clerk (TN 32)
and eliciting the scorn of an inn-keeper (TN 49); and his characteristic
benevolence, "visible in his Countenance"
(TN 55), will not let him expose the ignorance of the clergyman who had
contemptuously abused him before the justice (TN 58). Conflicting
revisions in the second and fourth editions have to do with Adams' ability
to keep the secrets of his superiors, the lack of which virtue in Richardson's
Pamela and Arthur Williams had annoyed Fielding: although he later
corrected Adams' tendency to discuss publicly the ignorance of the squire
(TN 2), at another time the parson's prolixity was made to get the better of
his good intentions as he openly deplores Lady Booby's conduct with
Joseph (TN 38). Elsewhere, Adams' innocence of the ways of this world
leads him to suppose that he can strike a better bargain with the bookseller
if he confesses the urgency of his needs (TN 22). Several new passages
illustrate his impressive learning and scholarship: Latin and Greek, for
example, roll readily from his tongue, and he quotes Theocritus to
demonstrate the instability of earthly fortunes (TN 31); the
shamelessness of a notorious Corinthian courtesan affords the aptest analogy
to the self-assurance of Leonora (TN 45); together with its sheepskin
binding, his Æschylus, we are told, was the affectionate work of his
own hands (TN 57, 60); and his enthusiastic recital of the
Iliad
"almost frighten'd the Women" in Mr. Wilson's parlor (TN 79). In this
regard, the most extensive interpolation augments the parson's impromptu
criticism of the
Iliad: to prove his claim that Homer's chief
excellence is "'in the pathetic,'" he prefers Andromache to the Tecmessa
of Sophocles, who is in turn placed above Euripides and Seneca as the best
of the tragedians (TN 78). Finally, two considerable additions exemplify
Adams' piety and his impractical Christian-Stoic idealism: occurring in the
consolatio to Joseph, who is frantic with grief at the
abduction
of Fanny, the first sounds a conventional theme of Christian consolatory
literature, the duty of submission to a benevolent
Providence (TN 106);
[13] the second
(TN 125), in which the parson rather wilfully distorts a text from Matthew
in order to admonish Joseph against the lust of the flesh (the verse pertains
to adultery, not conjugal love!), is a further instance of Adams' theoretical
contempt of the passions and a superb example of his author's comic irony.
Indeed, there could scarcely be a better demonstration of Fielding's mastery
of his craft, of his keen critical eye and creative powers, than his deft
retouching of the portrait of Parson
Adams, each new stroke bringing that remarkable figure closer to
perfection, until he stands forth at last complete and alive, one of the
supreme triumphs of art.
No less interesting as indications of Fielding's thematic intent are
several changes affecting the satire of the novel. Many of the revisions
adduced in the discussion of characterization might, of course, equally
apply here: Mrs. Tow-wouse or Trulliber or the Italian traveler fit neatly
into the scheme of "the true Ridiculous" that Fielding set forth in his
Preface. In a number of places, however, he gave himself to the castigation
less of particular human failings than of folly and vice within the
institutions and professions of society. Parenthetically, for example, he
scoffed at those "very sagacious Critics" who spun out absurdly fanciful
theories about the composition of Homer's epics (TN 28); or at greater
length he ridiculed those politically biased historians (topographers he
preferred to call them) who wilfully perverted their facts, producing
romance rather than true history (TN 72). In several substantial passages he
mocked with bitter irony at the law and its
practitioners. In one, describing the ill-natured rector of Adams' parish and
his ruinous litigation with the tenants of the manor (TN 5), Fielding
sardonically compared the consequences of the states of Civil War and Civil
Law, briefly raising an issue that would later occupy Dickens at length in
Bleak House. Another, even more extensive interpolation
—
again combining satire of the law and clergy — exposes the
ignorance of
the country justice and his clerk, who darkly construe Adams' Æschylus
as a ciphered document in a plot against the government (TN 57). Later,
Fielding heightened the severity of his sketch of the pettifogger Scout by
further revealing his fondness for legal jargon and his casuistry,
circumventing the plain intent of the law (TN 116); and Scout next flatters
his patroness by blackening the character of her rival (TN 118).
Perhaps most significant, however, is Fielding's reinforcement of one
of the novel's prominent themes: his fictional continuation of the campaign
begun in The Champion to correct a prevalent contempt of
the
clergy.[14] In Abraham Adams,
pilgrim, patriarch and priest, whose faith is forever proved through his
charitable offices and works, Fielding gives us the good clergyman,
heroically maintaining the true religion in a benighted world badly in need
of him; in some half-dozen other clergymen — all of them worldly,
incompetent, corrupt — he exposes for correction those really
responsible
for that contempt of
their order which was undermining the cause of religion and morality.
Returning to his novel, he intensified the satire of the clergy, adding, in
fact, an entirely new portrait to the small gallery of false priests already
exhibited. Brief changes, for example, point up the pride of Barnabas (TN
20) and, his mind crowded with thoughts of the punch bowl below stairs,
his perfunctory ministrations to the soul of Joseph (TN 13). As we have
seen earlier, other strokes clarified the hypocrisy of Parson Trulliber or
sharpened the outlines of his characterization. A sizable addition to the
account of Adams' rector, impoverishing his parishioners in a legal dispute
over a modus, rendered more vivid his greed, ill-nature, and vindictiveness
(TN 5). Finally, the important interpolation inserted into the trial scene in
Book II, Chapter 11, brought to the novel still another ignorant and
arrogant clergyman, who treats Adams with contempt while pronouncing
his Æschylus "'A Manuscript of
one of the Fathers. . . the Catechism in
Greek'" (TN
57).
Two other changes are most interesting, both as examples of
Fielding's satire of unprincipled politicians and as part of the pattern of his
own shifting political loyalties. In what stands as the most valuable
contribution of his early essay on the text of Joseph Andrews,
Digeon was the first to observe these implications in the revised opening to
Book II, Chapter 10, where Fielding flicks his lash at the double-dealing,
predatory members of the Patriot Opposition.[15] Elsewhere I have argued that
Fielding's
disillusionment with his former party was not the sudden result of the
change of ministries in February 1742, but that it began much earlier,
probably with his defection from The Champion in June
1741.[16] The new attitude is clearly
evinced in his satirical allegory, The Opposition: A Vision
(December 1741), and it is present as well in the first edition of
Joseph Andrews, where Fielding's
own unhappy experiences with the Opposition inform the political parable
of Parson Adams' encounter with the cowardly patriot and are vicariously
represented in the hypocrisy and ingratitude of those place-hunting members
of the Country Party who used Adams for their own ends and then
abandoned him (II, 7-9). As he revised the novel in the spring of 1742,
Fielding sharpened this satire. In a passage that Digeon overlooked, the
affected francophile Bellarmine, who despite the serious decline in the
English woolen industry refuses to "'trust any thing more than a Great Coat
to an Englishman,'" now reveals himself as a member of the
turncoat Patriot Party: "'before I had a
Place, [he confesses to Leonora] I was in the Country Interest, he, he, he!'"
(TN 44). Even more pointed is the major interpolation at the beginning of
Book II, Chapter 10, where Fanny, in the dark not recognizing Adams,
who has just rescued her from a rape, fears "as great an Enemy in her
Deliverer, as he had delivered her from." Here Fielding draws an
unmistakable analogy between the situation of his heroine and that of
England in 1742, rid of the corruption of Walpole, but newly exposed to
the ambition of Pulteney, Carteret, and the other self-seeking Patriots who
had deposed him: "she suspected he had used her as some very honest Men
have used their Country; and had rescued her out of the hands of one
Rifler, in order to rifle her himself" (TN 55).
Through at least four editions, then, though most notably in the
second, Fielding worried over his first novel — shaping and
polishing it
with a craftsman's careful hand, bringing his story and his people even
more brilliantly to life. Style, scene, structure, characterization, satire
—
there is scarcely an aspect of the book that did not receive his attention in
revision. Offering much useful information about Fielding's habits of
composition, his techniques and intentions as a writer, the textual analysis
of Joseph Andrews brings us unusually close to the novelist
in
the process of creation, an advantage that not even the most attentive
reading of the finished work can afford.
