in request for unions of a private character. The date in the register is the 27th of November 1747. The second Mrs. Fielding’s maiden name, which has been hitherto variously reported as Macdonnell, Macdonald, and Macdaniel, is given as Mary Daniel, [Footnote: See note to Fielding’s letter in Chap. vii.] and she is further described as “of St Clement’s Danes, Middlesex, Spinster.” Either previously to this occurrence, or immediately after it, Fielding seems to have taken two rooms in a house in Back Lane, Twickenham, “not far,” says the Rev. Mr. Cobbett in his Memorials, “from the site of Copt Hall.” In 1872 this house was still standing,—a quaint old-fashioned wooden structure; [Footnote: Now (1883) it no longer exists, and a row of cottages occupies the site.]—and from hence, on the 25th February 1748, was baptized the first of the novelist’s sons concerning whom any definite information exists—the William Fielding who, like his father, became a Westminster magistrate. Beyond suggesting that it may supply a reason why, during Mrs. Fielding’s life-time, her husband’s earliest biographer made no reference to the marriage, it is needless to dwell upon the proximity between the foregoing dates. In other respects the circumstance now first made public is not inconsistent with Lady Stuart’s narrative; and there is no doubt, from the references to her in the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon and elsewhere, that Mary Daniel did prove an excellent wife, mother, and nurse. Another thing is made clear by the date established, and this is that the verses “On Felix; Marry’d to a Cook-Maid” in the Gentleman’s Magazine for July 1746, to which Mr. Lawrence refers, cannot possibly have anything to do with Fielding,
