NEWBERY, OF PICTURE-BOOK MEMORY--HOW TO KEEP UP APPEARANCES--MISERIES OF
AUTHORSHIP--A POOR RELATION--LETTER TO HODSON
Being now known in the publishing world, Goldsmith began to find casual
employment in various quarters; among others he wrote occasionally for the
"Literary Magazine," a production set on foot by Mr. John Newbery,
bookseller, St. Paul's Churchyard, renowned in nursery literature
throughout the latter half of the last century for his picture-books for
children. Newbery was a worthy, intelligent, kind-hearted man, and a
seasonable though cautious friend to authors, relieving them with small
loans when in pecuniary difficulties, though always taking care to be well
repaid by the labor of their pens. Goldsmith introduces him in a humorous
yet friendly manner in his novel of the Vicar of Wakefield. "This person
was no other than the philanthropic bookseller in St. Paul's Churchyard,
who has written so many little books for children; he called himself their
friend; but he was the friend of all mankind. He was no sooner alighted but
he was in haste to be gone; for he was ever on business of importance, and
was at that time actually compiling materials for the history of one Mr.
Thomas Trip. I immediately recollected this good-natured man's red-pimpled
face."
Besides his literary job work, Goldsmith also resumed his medical practice,
but with very trifling success. The scantiness of his purse still obliged
him to live in obscure lodgings somewhere in the vicinity of Salisbury
Square, Fleet Street; but his extended acquaintance and rising importance
caused him to consult appearances. He adopted an expedient, then very
common, and still practiced in London among those who have to tread the
narrow path between pride and poverty; while he burrowed in lodgings suited
to his means, he "hailed," as it is termed, from the Temple Exchange
Coffeehouse near Temple Bar. Here he received his medical calls; hence he
dated his letters, and here he passed much of his leisure hours, conversing
with the frequenters of the place. "Thirty pounds a year," said a poor
Irish painter, who understood the art of shifting, "is enough to enable a
man to live in London without being contemptible. Ten pounds will find him
in clothes and linen; he can live in a garret on eighteen pence a week;
hail from a coffee-house, where, by occasionally spending threepence, he
may pass some hours each day in good company; he may breakfast on bread and
milk for a penny; dine for sixpence; do without supper; and on
_clean-shirt-day_ he may go abroad and pay visits."
Goldsmith seems to have taken a leaf from this poor devil's manual in
respect to the coffee-house at least. Indeed, coffee-houses in those days
were the resorts of wits and literati, where the topics of the day were
gossiped over, and the affairs of literature and the drama discussed and
criticised. In this way he enlarged the circle of his intimacy, which now
embraced several names of notoriety.
Do we want a picture of Goldsmith's experience in this part of his career?
we have it in his observations on the life of an author in the "Inquiry
into the State of Polite Learning," published some years afterward.
"The author, unpatronized by the great, has naturally recourse to the
bookseller. There cannot, perhaps, be imagined a combination more
prejudicial to taste than this. It is the interest of the one to allow as
little for writing, and for the other to write as much as possible;
accordingly tedious compilations and periodical magazines are the result of
their joint endeavors. In these circumstances the author bids adieu to
fame; writes for bread; and for that only imagination is seldom called in.
He sits down to address the venal muse with the most phlegmatic apathy;
and, as we are told of the Russian, courts his mistress by falling asleep
in her lap."
Again. "Those who are unacquainted with the world are apt to fancy the man
of wit as leading a very agreeable life. They conclude, perhaps, that he is
attended with silent admiration, and dictates to the rest of mankind with
all the eloquence of conscious superiority. Very different is his present
situation. He is called an author, and all know that an author is a thing
only to be laughed at. His person, not his jest, becomes the mirth of the
company. At his approach the most fat, unthinking face brightens into
malicious meaning. Even aldermen laugh, and avenge on him the ridicule
which was lavished on their forefathers.... The poet's poverty is a
standing topic of contempt. His writing for bread is an unpardonable
offense. Perhaps of all mankind an author in these times is used most
hardly. We keep him poor, and yet revile his poverty. We reproach him for
living by his wit, and yet allow him no other means to live. His taking
refuge in garrets and cellars has of late been violently objected to him,
and that by men who, I hope, are more apt to pity than insult his distress.
Is poverty a careless fault? No doubt he knows how to prefer a bottle of
champagne to the nectar of the neighboring ale-house, or a venison pasty to
a plate of potatoes. Want of delicacy is not in him, but in those who deny
him the opportunity of making an elegant choice. Wit certainly is the
property of those who have it, nor should we be displeased if it is the
only property a man sometimes has. We must not underrate him who uses it
for subsistence, and flees from the ingratitude of the age even to a
bookseller for redress."...
"If the author be necessary among us, let us treat him with proper
consideration as a child of the public, not as a rent-charge on the
community. And indeed a child of the public he is in all respects; for
while so well able to direct others, how incapable is he frequently found
of guiding himself. His simplicity exposes him to all the insidious
approaches of cunning; his sensibility, to the slightest invasions of
contempt. Though possessed of fortitude to stand unmoved the expected
bursts of an earthquake, yet of feelings so exquisitely poignant as to
agonize under the slightest disappointment. Broken rest, tasteless meals,
and causeless anxieties shorten life, and render it unfit for active
employments; prolonged vigils and intense application still further
contract his span, and make his time glide insensibly away."
While poor Goldsmith was thus struggling with the difficulties and
discouragements which in those days beset the path of an author, his
friends in Ireland received accounts of his literary success and of the
distinguished acquaintances he was making. This was enough to put the wise
heads at Lissoy and Ballymahon in a ferment of conjectures. With the
exaggerated notions of provincial relatives concerning the family great man
in the metropolis, some of Goldsmith's poor kindred pictured him to
themselves seated in high places, clothed in purple and fine linen, and
hand and glove with the givers of gifts and dispensers of patronage.
Accordingly, he was one day surprised at the sudden apparition, in his
miserable lodging, of his younger brother Charles, a raw youth of
twenty-one, endowed with a double share of the family heedlessness, and who
expected to be forthwith helped into some snug by-path to fortune by one or
other of Oliver's great friends. Charles was sadly disconcerted on learning
that, so far from being able to provide for others, his brother could
scarcely take care of himself. He looked round with a rueful eye on the
poet's quarters, and could not help expressing his surprise and
disappointment at finding him no better off. "All in good tune, my dear
boy," replied poor Goldsmith, with infinite good-humor; "I shall be richer
by-and-by. Addison, let me tell you, wrote his poem of the Campaign in a
garret in the Haymarket, three stones high, and you see I am not come to
that yet, for I have only got to the second story."
Charles Goldsmith did not remain long to embarrass his brother in London.
With the same roving disposition and inconsiderate temper of Oliver, he
suddenly departed in a humble capacity to seek his fortune in the West
Indies, and nothing was heard of him for above thirty years, when, after
having been given up as dead by his friends, he made his reappearance in
England.
Shortly after his departure Goldsmith wrote a letter to his brother-in-law,
Daniel Hodson, Esq., of which the following is an extract; it was partly
intended, no doubt, to dissipate any further illusions concerning his
fortunes which might float on the magnificent imagination of his friends in
Ballymahon.
"I suppose you desire to know my present situation. As there is nothing in
it at which I should blush, or which mankind could censure, I see no reason
for making it a secret. In short, by a very little practice as a physician,
and a very little reputation as a poet, I make a shift to live. Nothing is
more apt to introduce us to the gates of the muses than poverty; but it
were well if they only left us at the door. The mischief is they sometimes
choose to give us their company to the entertainment; and want, instead of
being gentleman-usher, often turns master of the ceremonies.
"Thus, upon learning I write, no doubt you imagine I starve; and the name
of an author naturally reminds you of a garret. In this particular I do not
think proper to undeceive my friends. But, whether I eat or starve, live in
a first floor or four pairs of stairs high, I still remember them with
ardor; nay, my very country comes in for a share of my affection.
Unaccountable fondness for country, this _maladie du pais_, as the
French call it! Unaccountable that he should still have an affection for a
place, who never, when in it, received above common civility; who never
brought anything out of it except his brogue and his blunders. Surely my
affection is equally ridiculous with the Scotchman's, who refused to be
cured of the itch because it made him unco' thoughtful of his wife and
bonny Inverary.
"But now, to be serious: let me ask myself what gives me a wish to see
Ireland again. The country is a fine one, perhaps? No. There are good
company in Ireland? No. The conversation there is generally made up of a
smutty toast or a bawdy song; the vivacity supported by some humble cousin,
who had just folly enough to earn his dinner. Then, perhaps, there's more
wit and learning among the Irish? Oh, Lord, no! There has been more money
spent in the encouragement of the Padareen mare there one season than given
in rewards to learned men since the time of Usher. All their productions in
learning amount to perhaps a translation, or a few tracts in divinity; and
all their productions in wit to just nothing at all. Why the plague, then,
so fond of Ireland? Then, all at once, because you, my dear friend, and a
few more who are exceptions to the general picture, have a residence there.
This it is that gives me all the pangs I feel in separation. I confess I
carry this spirit sometimes to the souring the pleasures I at present
possess. If I go to the opera, where Signora Columba pours out all the
mazes of melody, I sit and sigh for Lissoy fireside, and Johnny Armstrong's
'Last Good-night' from Peggy Golden. If I climb Hampstead Hill, than where
nature never exhibited a more magnificent prospect, I confess it fine; but
then I had rather be placed on the little mount before Lissoy gate, and
there take in, to me, the most pleasing horizon in nature.
"Before Charles came hither my thoughts sometimes found refuge from severer
studies among my friends in Ireland. I fancied strange revolutions at home;
but I find it was the rapidity of my own motion that gave an imaginary one
to objects really at rest. No alterations there. Some friends, he tells me,
are still lean, but very rich; others very fat, but still very poor. Nay,
all the news I hear of you is, that you sally out in visits among the
neighbors, and sometimes make a migration from the blue bed to the brown. I
could from my heart wish that you and she (Mrs. Hodson), and Lissoy and
Ballymahon, and all of you, would fairly make a migration into Middlesex;
though, upon second thoughts, this might be attended with a few
inconveniences. Therefore, as the mountain will not come to Mohammed, why
Mohammed shall go to the mountain; or, to speak plain English, as you
cannot conveniently pay me a visit, if next summer I can contrive to be
absent six weeks from London, I shall spend three of them among my friends
in Ireland. But first, believe me, my design is purely to visit, and
neither to cut a figure nor levy contributions; neither to excite envy nor
solicit favor; in fact, my circumstances are adapted to neither. I am too
poor to be gazed at, and too rich to need assistance."