History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

Chapter vii opens with a grave shift: Mr Allworthy, having long neglected a cold, is brought to death’s door. He summons his household, rebukes Blifil for excessive lamentation with a Stoic comparison of life to a feast, and then announces the heads of his will. Blifil is named heir to the whole estate, with the reversion of £500 a year after his mother; Jones receives an estate of £500 a year and £1000 in ready money; Thwackum and Square each receive £1000, which both privately resent as inadequate. Before Allworthy can finish, a Salisbury attorney arrives in such haste that he protests only quartering himself four ways could suffice; Allworthy, exhausted, retires to rest. Chapter viii records the discontent of the beneficiaries: the housekeeper Mrs Wilkins fumes at being classed with servants; Thwackum and Square fall to bickering about whether faith or philosophy governs Allworthy. Blifil then announces the death of his mother, Mrs Blifil, who has been struck by the gout on her journey home. The physician, having earlier magnified the danger, now somewhat theatrically pronounces Allworthy out of peril, and the news of the sister’s death is communicated to the convalescent.

In Chapter ix Jones, drunk with joy at Allworthy’s recovery, embraces the doctor, swears devotion, and clashes with Thwackum, who hints that the legacy might have been revoked. An accidental reference by Blifil to “tragical spectacles” and parents provokes Jones to seize him by the collar, leading to a scuffle broken up by Thwackum and the physician. Peace is outwardly restored, but merriment ends. Chapter x finds the half-drunk Jones wandering in a grove, rapturously invoking Sophia, when he encounters Molly Seagrim with a pitchfork. Wine having overthrown his reason, the pair retire into the thicket. Blifil and Thwackum, passing by, glimpse the lovers; Thwackum, inflamed with moral fury, leads Blifil to the spot.

Chapter xi begins with a Latin simile comparing the threatened stag to Jones defending his hind. Thwackum thunders and demands to know the woman’s name; Jones refuses and strikes Blifil to the ground. Thwackum, an old fist-fighter, returns the combat with vigour, but Jones very nearly subdues him until Blifil recovers and re-engages. The odds would likely have overwhelmed Jones, weakened by his still-healing arm, had not Squire Western, strolling by with company, gallantly intervened to help the weaker party, recognising no one until the fight ends. Chapter xii depicts the aftermath: Blifil lies pallid, Thwackum sullen like King Porus, and Western magnanimously forbearing. But the company is distracted by the sudden swoon of Sophia, who has fainted at the sight of blood. Jones abandons Blifil, plashes water from the brook on Sophia’s face, and restores her to life, receiving her first tender look of unguarded love. Western, overjoyed, hugs and kisses Jones and offers him everything except his foxhounds, the Chevalier, and Miss Slouch. Thwackum and Blifil depart in dudgeon, while Sophia observes the bruises on Jones’s breast with inexpressible tenderness.

Book VI opens with an essay defending the reality of love against philosophical sceptics who would reduce all affection to appetite or vanity. Fielding distinguishes benevolent love from hunger, concedes that desire heightens its delights, and argues that esteem and gratitude can sustain a passion whose erotic basis has ceased. Chapter ii introduces Mrs Western, Sophia’s aunt, a learned, courtly spinster of nearly six feet, deeply read in politics, romances, and the arts of fashionable intrigue. Mistaking Sophia’s faint for a sign of love for Blifil, she informs her brother, who delightedly concludes that the union of their estates would be convenient, and resolves to propose the match to Allworthy, little suspecting the true object of his daughter’s heart.

Chapter iii. – Chapter vi.

In Chapter iii, the squire’s impatience to inform Allworthy of his proposed Sophia-Blifil match nearly overwhelms the caution of his sister Mrs Western, who must restrain him from visiting the sick man prematurely. Allworthy, having been engaged to dine at Western’s on the day he fell ill, discharges himself from medical care and proceeds to fulfill that engagement without delay. During the intervening days, Sophia, alerted by “obscure hints” from her aunt that the lady suspects her passion for Tom Jones, resolves to wipe out such suspicion through a studied performance of excessive gaiety toward Blifil and pointed indifference toward Jones. The squire is so pleased that he “scarce eat any dinner,” winking and nodding at his sister in approval. The narrator, however, observes that Sophia overacts her part so thoroughly that Mrs Western, a woman of “great art,” first suspects affectation, then attributes it to extreme art in Sophia—imagining her niece is rallying her by means of an overacted civility. The narrator concedes that this conjecture would have been better founded had Sophia lived “ten years in the air of Grosvenor Square,” where young ladies learn to “rally and play with that passion which is a mighty serious thing in woods and groves an hundred miles distant from London.”

The chapter contains a lengthy digression on the detection of deceit, illustrated by the story of three countrymen pursuing a Wiltshire thief through Brentford. The simplest sees “The Wiltshire House” on a sign and advises entering; the second laughs at this simplicity; the third, “wiser still,” urges them in anyway, reasoning that the thief may think they would not suspect him of going amongst his own countrymen. They search the house, miss the thief (who could not read), and the moral is drawn: that in countermining the artful, one’s own art must be wound up in the same key with theirs. Dinner concluded, Western takes Allworthy aside in the garden and bluntly proposes the match. Allworthy receives the news without visible emotion, offering a measured response: he wishes the alliance, praises Sophia’s merit, acknowledges the offer’s advantage in point of fortune, and consents provided the young people like each other. Western is disappointed at the lack of warmth and insists that “parents were the best judges of proper matches for their children,” declaring that he will insist on resigned obedience. A second digression follows, on “true wisdom,” which the narrator insists is not inconsistent with riches or pleasure but consists in moderation, a maxim applied to honours, riches, pleasures, and all the goods of the grand market of the world.