They were, however, celebrated for their personal attractions; and if the picture given in chap. ii. book iv. of Tom Jones accurately represents the first Mrs. Fielding, she must have been a most charming brunette. Something of the stereotyped characteristics of a novelist’s heroine obviously enter into the description; but the luxuriant black hair, which, cut “to comply with the modern Fashion,” “curled so gracefully in her Neck,” the lustrous eyes, the dimple in the right cheek, the chin rather full than small, and the complexion having “more of the Lilly than of the Rose,” but flushing with exercise or modesty, are, doubtless, accurately set down. In speaking of the nose as “exactly regular,” Fielding appears to have deviated slightly from the truth; for we learn from Lady Louisa Stuart that, in this respect, Miss Cradock’s appearance had “suffered a little” from an accident mentioned in book ii. of Amelia, the overturning of a chaise. Whether she also possessed the mental qualities and accomplishments which fell to the lot of Sophia Western, we have no means of determining; but Lady Stuart is again our authority for saying that she was as amiable as she was handsome.
From the love-poems in the first volume of the Miscellanies of 1743— poems which their author declares to have been “Productions of the Heart rather than of the Head”—it is clear that Fielding had been attached to his future wife for several years previous to 1735. One of them, Advice to the Nymphs of New S——m, celebrates the charms of Celia—the poetical equivalent for Charlotte—as early as 1730; another, containing a reference to the player Anthony Boheme, who died in 1731, was probably written at the same time; while a
