Tom Jones and “His Egyptian Majesty”: Fielding's Parable of Government

Abstract

Perhaps the most curious episode in Henry Fielding's masterpiece occurs toward the end of Tom Jones's journey (Book xii, Chapters xi–xii), when Tom, Partridge, and their less than Virgilian guide lose their way in the darkness of a stormy winter's night—a night, indeed, so obscure and inclement that Partridge, whose Jacobitism extends to a belief in demons as firm as that of James I, believes the company to be enchanted. Having strayed from the plain high road to Coventry into a dirty lane, the wayfarers at length discern the lights of a barn and hear the confused noises of merrymaking from within. Inquiring the road to Coventry, Tom, together with his companions, is given shelter and hospitality in the barn by a strange, jovial crew who prove to be “no other than a Company of Egyptians, or as they are vulgarly called Gypsies … now celebrating the Wedding of one of their Society” (xii, xii).