ABSTRACT
The years immediately following Familiar Letters marked important changes in Fielding’s personal life. On October 27, 1747, Henry married his former servant, Mary Daniel. At the time of the wedding, Daniel was six months pregnant. The Battestins speculate that while some relations found amusement in Henry’s adventures—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu quipped that Henry’s “natural spirits gave him rapture with his cook-maid”—Sarah was outraged over this “unseemly affair conducted in the household she had been mistress of since Charlotte’s death.” 1 We will never know Sarah’s actual reaction to Henry’s second marriage, but we can reasonably venture that it would have been closer to apprehension than embarrassment. The many references in her writings to the devastating effects of hasty marriages suggest that she would have worried about Henry and his family’s well-being, not the Fielding reputation.
