(Oliver’s Brother.)
Charles Goldsmith (born 1717, died 1805) the youngest but one of the
Revd. Charles Goldsmith’s children, comes on the scene earlier than
the others. Encouraged by the accounts which had reached Ireland of
his brother Oliver’s arrival in England and growing literary fame, he
ventured to the Metropolis in the year 1757, and as Northcote says in
his _Life of Reynolds_ (I, 332-3): “Having heard of his brother Noll
mixing in the first society in London, he took it for granted that his
fortune was made, and that he could soon make a brother’s also: he
therefore left home without notice: but soon found, on his arrival in
London, that the picture he had formed of his brother’s situation was
too highly coloured, that Noll could not introduce him to his great
friends, and in fact that, although out of a jail, he was often out of
a lodging.”
The garret where Goldsmith then wrote and slept is supposed to have
been one of the courts near Salisbury Square. His letters were
addressed from the neighbouring Temple-exchange coffee-house near
Temple Bar, and the secret of the lodging is said to have been won from
the coffee-house waiter “George” to whom Charles Goldsmith confided his
relationship. (Forster I, 124.)
Thus disappointed, Charles quitted London in a few days, suddenly and
secretly as he had entered it, “in a humble capacity it is said, for
Jamaica”: whence says Forster (I, 125) “he did not return till after
four-and-thirty years to tell this anecdote, and to be described by
Malone as not a little like his celebrated brother in person, speech
and manner.”
When Charles came back to this country in 1791 it was to arrange for
his ultimate settlement with his family in England: but after the peace
of Amiens (1802), he sold his house, and with his wife (a Creole), a
daughter and a son named Oliver (born in England), migrated to the
South of France. In consequence of Buonaparte’s order for detaining
British subjects, he again returned to England in 1803 by way of
Holland, much reduced in circumstances, and died about 1805 at humble
lodgings in Ossulston Street, Somers Town.
In an original letter of Charles himself, dated 2 September, 1795, in
the Percy bundle of Goldsmithiana, he says specifically: “I paid in
1791 a visit to my native country: on my arrival I found the greatest
part of my relations and old friends had paid the debt of Nature: my
brother Maurice remained: he gave me a pleasing account of the great
benefits you had been pleased to bestow on him.” As Maurice had died,
Charles put in a plea for help for himself in view of the necessity
of supporting “a wife and five children.” These were of course the
offspring of his Jamaica marriage with a Creole, and Charles said
nothing about any former marriage. Percy is not known to have answered
the letter: but on 8 December, 1801, Charles made another appeal.
Before answering this the Bishop made some cautious enquiries of
another member of the family, Catherine, daughter of the Revd. Henry,
who was already (since 1794) a candidate for his charity. She replied
on 28 December, 1801, that “there are some parts of his [Charles’]
letter true, and many others not so. He is indeed a most delightful
companion, abounds with wit and humour, and is perfectly the gentleman,
but he does not possess the steadiness or benevolent heart that my
much respected father or Uncle Oliver did. At the same time I think
he has a much better claim than my Uncle Maurice’s widow, for she was
left a very handsome fortune of near two hundred a year, and more than
a thousand pounds in ready money. I think she has no title at all to
receive anything from the sale of the Poems.” Later, Catherine wrote
again to the Bishop on 6 January, 1802, saying she had information that
her Uncle (Charles) “had a great deal of money in the Funds, that he
had some children and the most of them natural children. I assure you,
my Lord, he has a great deal of art and duplicity.” Percy wrote Charles
in 1802 some sort of letter, which the latter says he never received.
This was very possibly the case, in view of his migration to France
after the peace of Amiens.
Through the exertions of Edmund Malone, Charles was discovered to be
back in London, and he wrote to the Bishop in 1803 some details of his
experiences in France, following this up later in 1804 with a fuller
statement which is very readable and quite interesting.
The last letter preserved from Charles Goldsmith is dated 24 March,
1805, and is in a shaky hand, saying he is afraid “my poor little son
Oliver will soon be left fatherless and without a friend.” Probably
Charles died soon after, and according to the letter of a neighbour,
Mr. R. C. Roffe, dated 12 February, 1821, “almost in a state of second
childhood. His wife, with a son (Oliver) he had by her in England,
went to the West Indies”: and according to a quotation given by Prior
(II, 574) from a Jamaica newspaper, this Oliver died at Belmont on 21
October, 1828, in the thirty-second year of his age.
It must be added to the above that before Percy had heard from Charles,
he had in 1794 received a letter from one John Goldsmith, a sergeant of
the South Cork Militia, claiming to be Charles’s son. At first Percy
evidently thought the man an impostor. On one of John’s letters the
Bishop had pencilled “natural son of Charles Goldsmith,” and has marked
as “not true” a story of the marriage of his parents by “my uncle Henry
Goldsmith, who was then Rector of the Parish they lived in,” and
the reception of such parents by the grandmother Ann Goldsmith and
Catherine Hodson his aunt. John told the Bishop on 2 October, 1808, “I
did not imagine my father Charles Goldsmith was in existence, as I did
not either see or hear from him since I saw your Lordship in Dublin in
the year 1793, nor did I ever hear of his being married a second time.”
As there are amongst the Percy papers receipts dated in October, 1808,
May, 1809, and September, 1810, for a total of £35 in all for money
disbursed by the Bishop for the benefit of this John Goldsmith, Percy
may have considered there was something in his story after all.
As to what subsequently happened to this John Goldsmith and the eight
children on whose behalf he appealed to the generosity of Dr. Percy,
there seems to be no information available, but Prior (II, 574)
mentions that “a person named Goldsmith, and claiming to be a nephew
of the poet, died in the Cholera Hospital in Bristol in 1833: he was
in a state of destitution and may have had no just right to the honour
he assumed.” He may have been this John Goldsmith, son (legitimate or
otherwise) of Charles Goldsmith.