HOGARTH A VISITOR AT ISLINGTON--HIS CHARACTER--STREET STUDIES--SYMPATHIES
BETWEEN AUTHORS AND PAINTERS--SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS--HIS CHARACTER--HIS
DINNERS--THE LITERARY CLUB-ITS MEMBERS--JOHNSON'S REVELS WITH LANKEY AND
BEAU--GOLDSMITH AT THE CLUB
Among the intimates who used to visit the poet occasionally, in his retreat
at Islington, was Hogarth the painter. Goldsmith had spoken well of him in
his essays in the "Public Ledger," and this formed the first link in their
friendship. He was at this time upward of sixty years of age, and is
described as a stout, active, bustling little man, in a sky-blue coat,
satirical and dogmatic, yet full of real benevolence and the love of human
nature. He was the moralist and philosopher of the pencil; like Goldsmith
he had sounded the depths of vice and misery, without being polluted by
them; and though his picturings had not the pervading amenity of those of
the essayist, and dwelt more on the crimes and vices than the follies and
humors of mankind, yet they were all calculated, in like manner, to fill
the mind with instruction and precept, and to make the heart better.
Hogarth does not appear to have had much of the rural feeling with which
Goldsmith was so amply endowed, and may not have accompanied him in his
strolls about hedges and green lanes; but he was a fit companion with whom
to explore the mazes of London, in which he was continually on the lookout
for character and incident. One of Hogarth's admirers speaks of having come
upon him in Castle Street, engaged in one of his street studies, watching
two boys who were quarreling; patting one on the back who flinched, and
endeavoring to spirit him up to a fresh encounter. "At him again! D--- him,
if I would take it of him! at him again!"
A frail memorial of this intimacy between the painter and the poet exists
in a portrait in oil, called "Goldsmith's Hostess." It is supposed to have
been painted by Hogarth in the course of his visits to Islington, and given
by him to the poet as a means of paying his landlady. There are no
friendships among men of talents more likely to be sincere than those
between painters and poets. Possessed of the same qualities of mind,
governed by the same principles of taste and natural laws of grace and
beauty, but applying them to different yet mutually illustrative arts, they
are constantly in sympathy and never in collision with each other.
A still more congenial intimacy of the kind was that contracted by
Goldsmith with Mr. afterward Sir Joshua Reynolds. The latter was now about
forty years of age, a few years older than the poet, whom he charmed by the
blandness and benignity of his manners, and the nobleness and generosity of
his disposition, as much as he did by the graces of his pencil and the
magic of his coloring. They were men of kindred genius, excelling in
corresponding qualities of their several arts, for style in writing is what
color is in painting; both are innate endowments, and equally magical hi
their effects. Certain graces and harmonies of both may be acquired by
diligent study and imitation, but only in a limited degree; whereas by
their natural possessors they are exercised spontaneously, almost
unconsciously, and with ever-varying fascination. Reynolds soon understood
and appreciated the merits of Goldsmith, and a sincere and lasting
friendship ensued between them.
At Reynolds' house Goldsmith mingled in a higher range of company than he
had been accustomed to. The fame of this celebrated artist, and his amenity
of manners, were gathering round him men of talents of all kinds, and the
increasing affluence of his circumstances enabled him to give full
indulgence to his hospitable disposition. Poor Goldsmith had not yet, like
Dr. Johnson, acquired reputation enough to atone for his external defects
and his want of the air of good society. Miss Reynolds used to inveigh
against his personal appearance, which gave her the idea, she said, of a
low mechanic, a journeyman tailor. One evening at a large supper party,
being called upon to give as a toast the ugliest man she knew, she gave Dr.
Goldsmith, upon which a lady who sat opposite, and whom she had never met
before, shook hands with her across the table, and "hoped to become better
acquainted."
We have a graphic and amusing picture of Reynolds' hospitable but motley
establishment, in an account given by a Mr. Courtenay to Sir James
Mackintosh; though it speaks of a time after Reynolds had received the
honor of knighthood. "There was something singular," said he, "in the style
and economy of Sir Joshua's table that contributed to pleasantry and good
humor, a coarse, inelegant plenty, without any regard to order and
arrangement. At five o'clock precisely, dinner was served, whether all the
invited guests were arrived or not. Sir Joshua was never so fashionably
ill-bred as to wait an hour perhaps for two or three persons of rank or
title, and put the rest of the company out of humor by this invidious
distinction. His invitations, however, did not regulate the number of his
guests. Many dropped in uninvited. A table prepared for seven or eight was
of ten compelled to contain fifteen or sixteen. There was a consequent
deficiency of knives, forks, plates, and glasses. The attendance was in the
same style, and those who were knowing in the ways of the house took care
on sitting down to call instantly for beer, bread, or wine, that they might
secure a supply before the first course was over. He was once prevailed on
to furnish the table with decanters and glasses at dinner, to save time and
prevent confusion. These gradually were demolished in the course of
service, and were never replaced. These trifling embarrassments, however,
only served to enhance the hilarity and singular pleasure of the
entertainment. The wine, cookery and dishes were but little attended to;
nor was the fish or venison ever talked of or recommended. Amid this
convivial animated bustle among his guests, our host sat perfectly
composed; always attentive to what was said, never minding what was ate or
drank, but left every one at perfect liberty to scramble for himself."
Out of the casual but frequent meeting of men of talent at this hospitable
board rose that association of wits, authors, scholars, and statesmen,
renowned as the Literary Club. Reynolds was the first to propose a regular
association of the kind, and was eagerly seconded by Johnson, who proposed
as a model a club which he had formed many years previously in Ivy Lane,
but which was now extinct. Like that club the number of members was limited
to nine. They were to meet and sup together once a week, on Monday night,
at the Turk's Head on Gerard Street, Soho, and two members were to
constitute a meeting. It took a regular form hi the year 1764, but did not
receive its literary appellation until several years afterward.
The original members were Reynolds, Johnson, Burke, Dr. Nugent, Bennet
Langton, Topham Beauclerc, Chamier, Hawkins, and Goldsmith; and here a few
words concerning some of the members may be acceptable. Burke was at that
time about thirty-three years of age; he had mingled a little in politics,
and been Under Secretary to Hamilton at Dublin, but was again a writer for
the booksellers, and as yet but in the dawning of his fame. Dr. Nugent was
his father-in-law, a Roman Catholic, and a physician of talent and
instruction. Mr. afterward Sir John Hawkins was admitted into this
association from having been a member of Johnson's Ivy Lane club.
Originally an attorney, he had retired from the practice of the law, in
consequence of a large fortune which fell to him in right of his wife, and
was now a Middlesex magistrate. He was, moreover, a dabbler in literature
and music, and was actually engaged on a history of music, which he
subsequently published in five ponderous volumes. To him we are also
indebted for a biography of Johnson, which appeared after the death of that
eminent man. Hawkins was as mean and parsimonious as he was pompous and
conceited. He forbore to partake of the suppers at the club, and begged
therefore to be excused from paying his share of the reckoning. "And was he
excused?" asked Dr. Burney of Johnson. "Oh, yes, for no man is angry at
another for being inferior to himself. We all scorned him and admitted his
plea. Yet I really believe him to be an honest man at bottom, though to be
sure he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a
tendency to savageness." He did not remain above two or three years in the
club; being in a manner elbowed out in consequence of his rudeness to
Burke.
Mr. Anthony Chamier was secretary in the War Office, and a friend of
Beauclerc, by whom he was proposed. We have left our mention of Bennet
Langton and Topham Beauclerc until the last, because we have most to say
about them. They were doubtless induced to join the club through their
devotion to Johnson, and the intimacy of these two very young and
aristocratic young men with the stern and somewhat melancholy moralist is
among the curiosities of literature.
Bennet Langton was of an ancient family, who held their ancestral estate of
Langton in Lincolnshire, a great title to respect with Johnson. "Langton,
sir," he would say, "has a grant of free warrant from Henry the Second; and
Cardinal Stephen Langton, in King John's reign, was of this family."
Langton was of a mild, contemplative, enthusiastic nature. When but
eighteen years of age he was so delighted with reading Johnson's Rambler
that he came to London chiefly with a view to obtain an introduction to the
author. Boswell gives us an account of his first interview, which took
place in the morning. It is not often that the personal appearance of an
author agrees with the preconceived ideas of his admirer. Langton, from
perusing the writings of Johnson, expected to find him a decent, well
dressed, in short a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of which, down
from his bed chamber about noon, came, as newly risen, a large uncouth
figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head, and his
clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich, so
animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so
congenial with those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived
for him that veneration and attachment which he ever preserved.
Langton went to pursue his studies at Trinity College, Oxford, where
Johnson saw much of him during a visit which he paid to the university. He
found him in close intimacy with Topham Beauclerc, a youth two years older
than himself, very gay and dissipated, and wondered what sympathies could
draw two young men together of such opposite characters. On becoming
acquainted with Beauclerc he found that, rake though he was, he possessed
an ardent love of literature, an acute understanding, polished wit, innate
gentility and high aristocratic breeding. He was, moreover, the only son of
Lord Sidney Beauclerc and grandson of the Duke of St. Albans, and was
thought in some particulars to have a resemblance to Charles the Second.
These were high recommendations with Johnson, and when the youth testified
a profound respect for him and an ardent admiration of his talents the
conquest was complete, so that in a "short time," says Boswell, "the moral
pious Johnson and the gay dissipated Beauclerc were companions."
The intimacy begun in college chambers was continued when the youth came to
town during the vacations. The uncouth, unwieldy moralist was flattered at
finding himself an object of idolatry to two high-born, high-bred,
aristocratic young men, and throwing gravity aside, was ready to join in
their vagaries and play the part of a "young man upon town." Such at least
is the picture given of him by Boswell on one occasion when Beauclerc and
Langton having supped together at a tavern determined to give Johnson a
rouse at three o'clock in the morning. They accordingly rapped violently at
the door of his chambers in the Temple. The indignant sage sallied forth in
his shirt, poker in hand, and a little black wig on the top of his head,
instead of helmet; prepared to wreak vengeance on the assailants of his
castle; but when his two young friends, Lankey and Beau, as he used to call
them, presented themselves, summoning him forth to a morning ramble, his
whole manner changed. "What, is it you, ye dogs?" cried he. "Faith, I'll
have a frisk with you!"
So said so done. They sallied forth together into Covent Garden; figured
among the green grocers and fruit women, just come in from the country with
their hampers; repaired to a neighboring tavern, where Johnson brewed a
bowl of _bishop_, a favorite beverage with him, grew merry over his
cups, and anathematized sleep in two lines from Lord Lansdowne's drinking
song:
"Short, very short, be then thy reign,
For I'm in haste to laugh and drink again."
They then took boat again, rowed to Billingsgate, and Johnson and Beauclerc
determined, like "mad wags," to "keep it up" for the rest of the day.
Langton, however, the most sober-minded of the three, pleaded an engagement
to breakfast with some young ladies; whereupon the great moralist
reproached him with "leaving his social friends to go and sit with a set of
wretched _unideal_ girls."
This madcap freak of the great lexicographer made a sensation, as may well
be supposed, among his intimates. "I heard of your frolic t'other night,"
said Garrick to him; "you'll be in the 'Chronicle.'" He uttered worse
forebodings to others. "I shall have my old friend to bail out of the
round-house," said he. Johnson, however, valued himself upon having thus
enacted a chapter in the Rake's Progress, and crowed over Garrick on the
occasion. "_He_ durst not do such a thing!" chuckled he, "his
_wife_ would not _let_ him!"
When these two young men entered the club, Langton was about twenty-two,
and Beauclerc about twenty-four years of age, and both were launched on
London life. Langton, however, was still the mild, enthusiastic scholar,
steeped to the lips in Greek, with fine conversational powers and an
invaluable talent for listening. He was upward of six feet high, and very
spare. "Oh! that we could sketch him," exclaims Miss Hawkins, in her
Memoirs, "with his mild countenance, his elegant features, and his sweet
smile, sitting with one leg twisted round the other, as if fearing to
occupy more space than was equitable; his person inclining forward, as if
wanting strength to support his weight, and his arms crossed over his
bosom, or his hands locked together on his knee." Beauclerc, on such
occasions, sportively compared him to a stork in Raphael's Cartoons,
standing on one leg. Beauclerc was more "a man upon town," a lounger in St.
James's Street, an associate with George Selwyn, with Walpole, and other
aristocratic wits; a man of fashion at court; a casual frequenter of the
gaming-table; yet, with all this, he alternated in the easiest and happiest
manner the scholar and the man of letters; lounged into the club with the
most perfect self-possession, bringing with him the careless grace and
polished wit of high-bred society, but making himself cordially at home
among his learned fellow members.
The gay yet lettered rake maintained his sway over Johnson, who was
fascinated by that air of the world, that ineffable tone of good society in
which he felt himself deficient, especially as the possessor of it always
paid homage to his superior talent. "Beauclerc," he would say, using a
quotation from Pope, "has a love of folly, but a scorn of fools; everything
he does shows the one, and everything he says the other." Beauclerc
delighted in rallying the stern moralist of whom others stood in awe, and
no one, according to Boswell, could take equal liberty with him with
impunity. Johnson, it is well known, was often shabby and negligent in his
dress, and not overcleanly in his person. On receiving a pension from the
crown, his friends vied with each other in respectful congratulations.
Beauclerc simply scanned his person with a whimsical glance, and hoped
that, like Falstaff, "he'd in future purge and live cleanly like a
gentleman." Johnson took the hint with unexpected good humor, and profited
by it.
Still Beauclerc's satirical vein, which darted shafts on every side, was
not always tolerated by Johnson. '"Sir," said he on one occasion, "you
never open your mouth but with intention to give pain; and you have often
given me pain, not from the power of what you have said, but from seeing
your intention."
When it was at first proposed to enroll Goldsmith among the members of this
association, there seems to have been some demur; at least so says the
pompous Hawkins. "As he wrote for the booksellers, we of the club looked on
him as a mere literary drudge, equal to the task of compiling and
translating, but little capable of original and still less of poetical
composition."
Even for some time after his admission, he continued to be regarded in a
dubious light by some of the members. Johnson and Reynolds, of course, were
well aware of his merits, nor was Burke a stranger to them; but to the
others he was as yet a sealed book, and the outside was not prepossessing.
His ungainly person and awkward manners were against him with men
accustomed to the graces of society, and he was not sufficiently at home to
give play to his humor and to that bonhomie which won the hearts of all who
knew him. He felt strange and out of place in this new sphere; he felt at
times the cool satirical eye of the courtly Beauclerc scanning him, and the
more he attempted to appear at his ease the more awkward he became.